Area wide weed management project genotyping by sequencing data for Fleabane (Conyza bonariensis)

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The mobility of a weed species is a strong determinant of the optimal management strategy, including whether area-wide management will be beneficial. In this paper we examine the mobility and dispersal distances of flaxleaf fleabane (Conyza bonariensis), widely regarded as a highly mobile weed. We sampled individual weeds from two regions and sampled the same sites in the following season to conduct parentage analysis and assess intergenerational dispersal distances. We find high values of FIS across populations consistent with mostly self-fertilisation, but also relatively high genotypic diversity suggesting that outcrossing does occur at low rates. We find evidence for long distance dispersal (over 350km) and detect dispersal distances of up to 71km and 36km within each of the two regions using parentage analysis. We also find high spatial genetic structure within the Riverina region, with sites in 2021 genetically very similar to sites in 2020, indicating that local dispersal may be a more important driver of population genetics than long distance dispersal, perhaps due to the high rates of seed production and self-fertilisation. Glyphosate resistance was not spatially structured in fleabane in these regions, highlighting the role of movement, and significant proportions of susceptible plants were found in both regions. The high levels of mobility, including over potentially long distances, indicate that the value of control and preventing weed seed set is likely to extend beyond the farm and offer ‘area-wide’ benefit. This dataset contains the raw data, reference genome, bam files, genotype files, and scripts associated with this paper.