Research on the Drought Tolerance Mechanism of Pennisetum Glaucum (L.) in the Root During Seedling

BackgroundDrought, being as one of the major environmental limiting factors, leads a huge reduction in crop growth rate and biomass accumulation. Pearl millet is a suitable material to study drought resistance due to its excellent drought tolerance. Root is a very important part of plant playing crucial roles in plant growth and development, which makes it a target to research on.ResultsIn this study, we tried to find the mechanism of drought tolerance of pearl millet by comparing the data of physiology and transcriptome under normal and drought conditions at 3 time points (1 hour, 3 hours and 7 hours) in root at seedling stage. The relative electrical conductivity went up from 1hour to 7 hours in both control and drought stress groups and the content of malondialdehyde showed a decreasing trend. 2004, 1538 and 605 differently expressed genes were found at 1hour, 3 hours and 7 hours respectively. Some of these differently expressed genes were clustered significantly into ‘metabolic processes’, ‘MAPK signaling pathway’ and ‘plant hormone signal transduction’ like ABA signal transduction pathway in GO and KEGG enrichment analysis.ConclusionsPearl millet was found to have a rapid drought response, which may occur before 1 hour contributing to its drought tolerance. These results can provide a theoretical basis to enhance drought resistance in other plants.