LAUSR

Garlic, an economically important vegetable, spice, and medicinal crop, produces highly enlarged bulbs and unique organosulfur compounds. Here, we report a chromosome-level genome assembly for garlic, with a total size of approximately 16.24 gigabases, and its annotation of 57,561 predicted protein-coding genes, placing garlic as the first species with a sequenced genome in the genus Allium to date. The assembly reveals a recent burst of transposable elements, explaining the substantial expansion of the garlic genome and considerable evolution of certain genes associated with the biosynthesis of allicin and inulin neoseries-type fructans; these findings provide insights into the biosynthesis of these two compounds. Furthermore, a large-scale transcriptome was produced to characterize the expression patterns of garlic genes in different tissues and at various growth stages of enlarged bulbs. The reference genome and large-scale transcriptome data generated in this study provide new valuable resources for research on garlic biology and breeding.