Abstract: In order to obtain the whole genome of Ephestia elutella, a genome survey of E. elutella was performed by low-depth high-throughput sequencing based on the Illumina sequencing platform. The genomic characteristics of E. elutella, such as genome size, heterozygosity and repetitive sequences were predicted by K-mer method and the preliminary genome assembly was conducted by SOAP de novo software. The results showed that the estimated genome size, heterozygosity, repetitive sequence ratio and GC content of E. elutella genome were 546.4 Mb, 1.93%, 48.59% and 36.9% respectively, which suggested that E. elutella genome was a complex insect genome. Additionally, 3 192 823 contigs were obtained after preliminary assembly and the contig N50 was 244 bp, which indicated the low quality of genome assembly. The genome survey provided an important reference for subsequent acquisition of high-quality genome information of E. elutella.