Re: TEXT column > 1Gb

Must the genome all be in one big file, or can you store them one line per table row?

Not sure what OP is doing with plant genomes (other than some genomics) but the tools all use files and pipeline of sub-tools.  In and out of tuples would be expensive.  Very,very little "editing" done in the usual "update table set val where id" sense.

Lines in a vcf file can have thousands of colums fo nasty, cryptic garbage data that only really makes sense to tools, reader.  Highly denormalized of course.  (Btw, I hate sequencing :) )