Transcriptomic analysis of field-droughted sorghum from seedling to maturity reveals biotic and metabolic responses
Abstract
Understanding the molecular response of plants to drought is critical to efforts to improve agricultural yields under increasingly frequent droughts. We grew 2 cultivars of the naturally drought-tolerant food crop sorghum in the field under drought stress. We sequenced the mRNA from weekly samples of these plants, resulting in a molecular profile of drought response over the growing season. We find molecular differences in the 2 cultivars that help explain their differing tolerances to drought and evidence of a disruption in the plant's symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Our findings are of practical importance for agricultural breeding programs, while the resulting data are a resource for the plant and microbial communities for studying the dynamics of drought response.
- Publication:
-
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- DOI:
- 10.1073/pnas.1907500116
- Bibcode:
- 2019PNAS..11627124V