Chromosome-scale whole genome assembly and annotation of the Jamaican field cricket Gryllus assimilis

Gryllus assimilis, commonly known as Jamaican field cricket, is an edible insect with significant economic value in sustainable food production. Despite its importance, a high-quality reference genome of G. assimilis has not yet been published. Here, we report a chromosome-level reference genome of G. assimilis based on Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) sequencing, Illumina sequencing, and Hi-C technologies. The assembled genome has a total length of 1.60 Gbp with a scaffold N50 of 102 Mbp, and 96.80% of the nucleotides was assigned to 15 chromosome-scale scaffolds. The assembly completeness was validated using BUSCO, achieving 99.5% completeness against the arthropoda database. We predicted 27,645 protein-coding genes, and 825 Mb repetitive elements were annotated in the reference genome. This reference genome of G. assimilis can provide a basis for the subsequent development of genomic resources, offering insights for future functional genomic studies, comparative genomics, and DNA-informed breeding of this species.