As the predominant pest of alfalfa, Odontothrips loti Haliday causes great damages over the major alfalfa-growing regions of China. The characteristics of strong mobility and fecundity make them develop rapidly in the field and hard to be controlled. There is a shortage of bioinformation and limited genomic resources available of O. loti for us to develop novel pest management strategies. In this study, we constructed a chromosome-level reference genome assembly of O. loti with a genome size of 346.59 Mb and scaffold N50 length of 18.52 Mb, anchored onto 16 chromosomes and contained 20128 genes, of which 93.59% were functionally annotated. The results of 99.20% complete insecta_odb10 genes in BUSCO analysis, 91.11% short reads mapped to the ref-genome, and the consistent tendency among the thrips in the distribution of gene length reflects the quality of genome. Our study provided the first report of genome for the genus Odontothrips, which offers a genomic resource for further investigations on evolution and molecular biology of O. loti, contributing to pest management.

花蓟马是苜蓿的主要害虫，对我国苜蓿主产区造成了极大的危害。流动性强、繁殖力强的特点，使其在田间发展迅速且难以控制。O. loti的生物信息和基因组资源缺乏，可供我们开发新的害虫管理策略。在本研究中，我们构建了O. loti的染色体水平参考基因组组装，其基因组大小为346.59 Mb，支架N50长度为18.52 Mb，锚定在16条染色体上，包含20128个基因，其中93.59%进行了功能注释。 BUSCO分析结果显示99.20%的inserta_odb10基因完整，91.11%的短读长映射到ref-genome，蓟马基因长度分布的一致性趋势反映了基因组的质量。我们的研究首次提供了齿蓟马属基因组报告，为进一步研究齿蓟马属的进化和分子生物学提供了基因组资源，为害虫防治做出了贡献。