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Agrigenomics

Drive innovation in agriculture like never before by harnessing the full power of genomics

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Agrigenomics solutions

Whether your focus is crop or livestock breeding, genetic engineering, or pest and disease mitigation, HiFi sequencing delivers genomic data of exceptional quality and detail to meet the demands of your most ambitious research programs.

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Genomic breeding

Use HiFi sequencing to breed better by quickly assembling phased reference-quality genomes for the imputation of the most desirable complex traits.

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Genetic engineering of plants and animals

Create high-quality reference genomes, validate constructs, confirm edits, and evaluate off-target effects quickly and reliably with HiFi reads.

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Pest and disease research

Dig into genomes and transcriptomes of exceptional quality and specificity. Uncover hard-to-find novel genes responsible for traits like immunity, metabolic detoxification, and pesticide resistance.

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Poster

Ultra-high throughput multiomic analysis for agrigenomics on PacBio Revio system

Climate change and the rapidly growing global population are increasingly straining world food production. Long-read sequencing is being used in large-scale agricultural initiatives to help improve crop yields and combat pests and disease to meet increased agricultural demand. DNA extraction was automated on the Kingfisher DNA purification systems with PacBio-developed DNA extraction reagents and protocols.

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Tackle global challenges to feed a growing population

As the challenges of a growing global population and a changing climate mount, cutting-edge agricultural biotechnology is needed to drive scientific advances to sustainably feed our world.

At PacBio, we provide state-of-the-art genome sequencing solutions that enable you to uncover and harness agrigenomic insights from data of exceptional quality and detail.

Use these biological insights to enhance marker development, facilitate the production of more nutritious foods, safe-guard crop and livestock health, and increase agricultural yields for the world of tomorrow, today.

Common questions about genomics in agriculture

A pangenome is a collection of genomes from a population of species that represents the genetic diversity of the population. Pangenomes typically are 20-30 genomes depending on the biodiversity of the population. Pangenomes obtained through HiFi sequencing can be resolved into haplotype databases for enhanced trait imputation for desirable phenotypes for breeding.

Whole genome sequencing, transcriptome sequencing, epigenomics, metagenomics, and the targeted sequencing of plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, and complex populations can all be leveraged for your agricultural research in different areas. This includes breeding, pest management, and genome engineering.

Genome engineering, or gene editing, is a process where scientists can change the genetic information of agriculturally important species with biomolecular tools such as CRISPR-Cas9. HiFi sequencing can help you validate where edits are made on a genome-wide or targeted basis. It can also help you design more efficient workflows with extremely accurate genomic information.

HiFi sequencing enables agriscientists to generate haplotype-resolved, high-quality genomes that span most variant types. Complex traits, such as drought resistance and pest resistance, can be explained by a combination of genes, structural variants, copy number variants, and more. Agriscientists can harness this genetic information to inform marker development.

Agrigenomics in action

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Whole genome sequencing best practices

See recommended workflows for procuring reference-quality genomes, de novo.

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A HiFi movement: Transcript isoform resolved RNA sequencing

The books of life are fascinating yet challenging reads, owing to the complexity of the underlying biological processes and their alterations that lead to disease. Thanks to highly accurate HiFi long-read sequencing, we are now seeing fundamental changes in our ability to print, read and comprehend this most exciting literature.

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HiFi sequencing for a better view into the bovine genome

Evaluate how HiFi sequencing was used to assemble a bovine pangenome and sequence ancestry lines with HiFi low pass, to discover hundreds of novel structural variants that are candidates for QTL mapping— all while achieving more coverage, quality, accuracy, and completeness.

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Explore

Did you know we have a library of articles, reports, papers, and videos related to plant + animal genomics?

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“Future large efforts…will likely be able to assess nearly all genomic variation from only a single data source of accurate long reads”

— Leonard, A. S et al, bioRxiv 2023-06

AGRIGENOMICS BLOG SERIES

Dive in to our latest blog series to learn more about biodiversity to advance breeding, how genomics can protect crops and livestock, and what improved accuracy means for gene editing workflows.

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Agrigenomics for crop and livestock breeding

Unlock whole-new capabilities for your plant or animal breeding programs with long, high-quality, genomic reads made possible with HiFi sequencing.

• Build reference-quality, haplotype-resolved pangenomes for breeding.
• Impute desirable traits to SNPs, structural variants, and complex genotypes.
• Capture genomic variants on a genome-wide scale for outbreds, inbreds, and populations.

Flyer: PAS gene editing   Blog: Crop + livestock breeding

Agrigenomics for genome engineering

Obtain the detailed sequence information you need for your most sophisticated gene editing programs using highly accurate HiFi sequencing data.

• Speed up design workflows with accurate reference genomes.
• Find splice variants within the transcriptome.
• Validate edited sites.
• Capture on and off-target effects.
• Determine structural rearrangements across chromosomes.

Blog: Genome engineering

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Agrigenomics for pest and disease research

Find genomic clues hidden in the highly variable genetics of organisms such as insects, weeds, and fungi harming agricultural yield to tackle pests on the molecular level.

• Capture pest genomic diversity in incredible detail.
• Generate complete genome assemblies from just 5 ng of DNA input.
• Build annotations to better understand gene functions for targeting.

Blog: Pest + disease research

PacBio vs Oxford Nanopore*

Long-read sequencing performance
PacBio HiFi sequencing Oxford Nanopore
Coverage required to meet quality targets
19x diploid 56x diploid
CPU hours required 600 2,200
Peak memory usage required 200 GB 750 GB

*Alexander S. Leonard, Danang Crysnanto, Zih-Hua Fang, Michael P Heaton, Brian L. Vander Ley, Carolina Herrera, Heinrich Bollwein, Derek M. Bickhart, Kristen L. Kuhn, Timothy PL. Smith, Benjamin D. Rosen, Hubert Pausch. Structural Variant-based Pangenome Construction has Low Sensitivity to Variability of Haplotype-resolved Bovine Assemblies. [Preprint] bioRxiv 2021.11.02.466900; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.11.02.466900

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*Alexander S. Leonard, Danang Crysnanto, Zih-Hua Fang, Michael P Heaton, Brian L. Vander Ley, Carolina Herrera, Heinrich Bollwein, Derek M. Bickhart, Kristen L. Kuhn, Timothy PL. Smith, Benjamin D. Rosen, Hubert Pausch. Structural Variant-based Pangenome Construction has Low Sensitivity to Variability of Haplotype-resolved Bovine Assemblies. [Preprint] bioRxiv 2021.11.02.466900; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.11.02.466900

Agrigenomics applications

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Whole genome sequencing

Quickly and affordably create more complete, contiguous, and correct de novo assemblies of even the most complex genomes.

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Structural variant calling

Acquire high-sensitivity variant calls with low false discovery rates to gain actionable insights across populations.

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Targeted sequencing

Combine long-read sequencing with targeted sequence capture for a more comprehensive view of specific genomic regions of interest, regardless of size.

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RNA sequencing

Leverage the isoform sequence (Iso-Seq) method using the Kinnex RNA kit to obtain full-length cDNA sequences — from 5’ to the poly-A tail — to confidently characterize the full transcriptome.

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THIS IS YOUR MOMENT

Our highly differentiated portfolio of sequencing systems offer exceptional accuracy for insights into a changing planet.

From the fullest picture to the finest detail, your moment of discovery is waiting.

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