Genomic DNA of M. oryzae isolates was extracted manually using the AllPrep Fungal DNA/RNA/Protein Kit (QIAGEN, Cat. No. 47054) following the manufacturers protocol, with 50 mg of fungal mycelium. Library preparation was conducted using the KAPA HyperPlus Kit (Roche, Cat. No. 07962428001) according to the manufacturers protocol. Final libraries were quantified with a Qubit 4.0 fluorometer (Thermo Fisher, Cat. No. Q33238) using the Qubit dsDNA HS Assay Kit (Thermo Fisher, Cat. No. Q32851). Insert size distribution was determined using an Agilent 4150 TapeStation with High Sensitivity D1000 ScreenTapes (Agilent, Cat. No. 50675582). The pooled libraries were sequenced on the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 System using an S4 flow cell (Rapid Run Mode, 2  150 bp) at Centyle Biotech Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi. Demultiplexing of pooled libraries was performed using BaseSpace Sequence Hub (Illumina). Initial quality assessment of raw reads was performed using FastQC. Subsequent quality control and filtering were conducted with fastp to: (a) remove adapter sequences; (b) discard reads with a Phred quality score < 30 in more than 30% of bases; and (c) remove reads shorter than 70 bp. Postfiltering, the average read length was 159 bp. Highquality reads were assembled de novo using MEGAHIT.