The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service published the first complete genome of one of the most agriculturally harmful migratory insects in the world, the desert locust.

The USDA reported the genome of the desert locust, also known as schistocerca gregaria, contains approximately 9 billion base pairs, which is more than three times the amount of the human genome, according to a June 27 news release.

"We were concerned that, faced with this huge and very likely complex desert locust genome, it was going to be an extremely long and difficult job. However, we were able to go from sample collection to a final assembled genome in under 5 months," entomologist Scott M. Geib with the ARS Tropical Crop and Commodity Protection Research Unit in Hilo, Hawaii, said in the release. "With the desert locust, we were dealing with a much larger genome in many fewer pieces; about 8.8 Gb in just 12 chromosomes." 

In addition, the release notes a number of the desert locust's chromosomes are bigger than the entirety of the fruit fly genome.

"Next to the fruit fly, it's like an 18-wheeler next to a compact car. It was like sequencing a typical insect genome many, many times over," Geib said in the release. "But with today's advances in DNA sequencing technologies, we are now able to generate extremely accurate genomes of insects that previously would have been unapproachable."

This effort is a component of the Ag100Pest Initiative, an ARS initiative that seeks to produce higher genomes for the top 100 agricultural arthropod pests as a basis for both scientific and practical research, according to the release.