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Mulberry is an economically important crop plant that is used for human food, animal feed and sericulture in addition to the pharmaceutical and timber industry. Mulberry is a flowering plant belonging to Moraceae family and Morus genus. The silkworm (Bombyx mori) feeds exclusively on mulberry leaves. The growth and development features of mulberry are very important for the sericultural production. Till date, quite a few genomic resources have been developed for some of the Morus spp.

Morus indica (Indian mulberry) is a small deciduous tree native to temperate and sub-tropical Himalayan region and cultivated in India, China, Japan and East Africa. The berries of M. indica are rich in flavonoids and have potent antioxidant properties and is used in regulating blood glucose levels. Quite a few genomic resources have been developed for M. indica and an efficient method for its transformation have also been developed. However, these resources remain insufficient and generation of more comprehensive resources is required. The availability of a reference genome sequence of M. indica can fuel functional genomics studies and implementing biotechnological and breeding programmes for its improvement.

Here, we have sequenced and assembled the genome sequence of K2 cultivar using a combination of four different technologies. The repetitive content, protein-coding genes and simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in the K2 genome were identified. The comparative analysis with other plant genomes provided insights into the evolutionary relationships, divergence time and species-specific genes. Further, expression profiling identified tissue-specific genes and the genes showing differential expression across different Morus accessions/species. In addition, we resequenced the genomes of 21 mulberry accessions/species, identified DNA polymorphisms among them and elucidated their functional relevance. These data provide a comprehensive resource for functional and applied genomic studies for mulberry improvement.