use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my $string = "> abcd1234
abcd abcd 
>xyz123 
xyz";


my @substrings = $string =~ /(>.+)/g;

print Dumper \@substrings;

##</code><code>##

$VAR1 = [
          '> abcd1234',
          '>xyz123 '
        ];

##</code><code>##

$VAR2 = [
          '> abcd1234',
          'abcd abcd'
        ];