Ag100Pest Initiative

The Ag100Pest Initiative is led by the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. The initiative leverages ARS's unique expertise in both arthropod pest management and agricultural genomics research, and enhances the agency’s contribution to two international genome sequencing projects – i5K and the Earth BioGenome Project (to sequence the genomes of all of the world’s 1.5 million animals and plants).

Goal: Produce annotated, reference quality genome assemblies for the top 100 US arthropod agricultural pests. When possible, generate the PacBio long-read data from a single individual.

Arthropod pests of US field crops, livestock, bees, trees, rangeland and stored products as well as foreign pest species considered potential invasive threats to US agriculture are included. Beyond genomes, Ag100Pest teams will develop best practices that will benefit the entire arthropod genomics community. We are interested in collaborating with the community in these efforts and hope our successes will encourage others to undertake similar efforts.

Executive Committee: Anna Childers, Brian Scheffler, Kevin Hackett
Core Team: Brad Coates, Scott Geib, Brian Scheffler, Tim Smith, Anna Childers, Sheina Sim, Monica Poelchau, Chris Childers, Kevin Hackett

The 169 genome sequencing projects in the table below are currently included in the effort. Some species will have more than one assembly where there is value in comparing among sexes, populations, or subspecies. This list is not final; additions and modifications may occur as the project progresses.
Last updated: 2021-03-09