Tea (Camellia sinensis L.) is a popular world beverage, and propagation of tea plants chiefly depends on the formation of adventitious roots in cuttings. To better understand potential mechanisms involved in adventitious root formation, we performed transcriptome analysis of single nodal cuttings of C. sinensis treated with or without indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) using the Illumina sequencing method. Totally 42.5 million RNA-Seq reads were obtained and these were assembled into 59,931 unigenes, with an average length of 732 bp and an N50 of 1292 bp. In addition, 1091 differentially expressed unigenes were identified in the tea cuttings treated with IBA compared to controls, including 656 up- and 435 down-regulated genes. Further real time RT-PCR analysis confirmed RNA-Seq data. Functional annotation analysis showed that many genes were involved in plant hormone signal transduction, secondary metabolism, cell wall organization and glutathione metabolism, indicating potential contributions to adventitious rooting. Our study presents a global view of transcriptome profiles of tea cuttings in response to IBA treatment and provides new insights into the fundamental mechanisms associated with auxin-induced adventitious rooting. Our data will be a valuable resource for genomic research about adventitious root formation in tea cuttings, which can be used to improve rooting for difficult-to-root varieties.
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