A draft genome resource for the cacao thread blight-causing fungal pathogen Marasmiellus scandens

Members of the Marasmiinaea suborder of basidiomycetous fungi cause thread blight disease (TBD) in cacao, Theobroma cacao, and are a threat to chocolate production worldwide. The most cited causal agent of TBD is Marasmiellus scandens; however, among recent TBD-causing Marasmiinaea isolations in Ghana, only 8% were M. scandens. Nonetheless, owing to the emerging threat of TBD to cacao, generating a high-quality genome assembly of the pathogen M. scandens is of considerable importance. This announcement describes our assembly, annotation, and release of a draft nuclear genome for M. scandens strain GH-19 using a hybrid assembly approach combining long- and short-read sequencing data. [Formula: see text]