Physiological responses and transcriptome analysis of the Kochia prostrata (L.) Schrad. to seedling drought stress

Abstract Kochia prostrata is a good forage plant, which has important economic and ecological value in arid and semi-arid regions of China. Drought is one of the main factors affecting its productivity. At present, there are few studies on the mechanism of drought resistance. In order to reveal the changes of physiological and biochemical indexes, stomatal structure and gene expression profiles of Kochia prostrata under drought treatment, the classical determination method and high-throughput Illumina Hiseq sequencing platform were applied to the control group (CK) and drought treatment group of Kochia prostrata. The results showed that under the condition of moderate to mild drought stress, the SOD activity reached the maximum value of 350.68 U/g min on the 5th day of stress, and under the condition of severe drought stress, the SOD activity reached the maximum on the 2nd day of stress. The accumulation of Proline remained at a high level on the 5th day of stress, and there was at least one epidermal cell interval between the two adult stomatal of the leaf epidermis, so that the evaporation shell of each stomatal did not overlap, it ensures the efficient gas exchange of the stomatal, indicating that the Kochia prostrata has strong drought resistance. A total of 1,177.46 M reads were obtained by sequencing, with a total of 352.25 Gbp data and Q30 of 85%. In the differential gene annotation to the biological process (BP), a total of 261 GO terms were enriched in the up-regulated genes, and a total of 231 GO terms were enriched in the down-regulated genes. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were obtained in 27 KEGG metabolic pathways, which laid a foundation for revealing the molecular mechanism of drought tolerance.