Due to evolving molecular and informatics technologies, modern genome sequencing projects have more different characteristics than what most biologists have become accustomed to during the capillary-based sequencing era. In this paper, we explore the characteristics that made past insect genome projects successful and place them in the context of next-generation sequencing. By taking into account the intricacies of whitefly biology and the community, we present a roadmap for whitefly-omics, which focuses on the formation of an international consortium, deployment of informatic platforms and realistic generation of reference sequence data.