Water stress causes considerable yield losses in sugarcane. To investigate differentially expressed genes under water stress, a pot experiment was performed with the sugarcane variety GT21 at three water-deficit levels (mild, moderate, and severe) during the elongation stage and gene expression was analyzed using microarray technology. Physiological parameters of sugarcane showed significant alterations in response to drought stress. Based on the expression profile of 15,593 sugarcane genes, 1,501 (9.6%) genes were differentially expressed under different water-level treatments; 821 genes were upregulated and 680 genes were downregulated. A gene similarity analysis showed that approximately 62.6% of the differentially expressed genes shared homology with functional proteins. In a Gene Ontology (GO) analysis, 901 differentially expressed genes were assigned to 36 GO categories. Moreover, 325 differentially expressed genes were classified into 101 pathway categories involved in various processes, such as the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, ribosomes, carbon metabolism, etc. In addition, some unannotated genes were detected; these may provide a basis for studies of water-deficit tolerance. The reliability of the observed expression patterns was confirmed by RT-PCR. The results of this study may help identify useful genes for improving drought tolerance in sugarcane.

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Sugarcane is a cash crop that plays an integral part in the sugar industry. The Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative (SSI) has been adopted globally, ensuring enough and aiming for more yield, helping increase disease-free sugarcane cultivation. Single-bud seeds could be the best approach for sugarcane cultivation. Indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) is a rooting agent utilized significantly in seedling propagation. Greenhouse experiment results discovered the significant growth promotion in sugarcane seedlings and accumulation of plant hormones at 100 ppm IBA. Next, we performed transcriptomic analysis of sugarcane buds using RNA sequencing and compared their gene expression during root development due to affect of IBA (100 ppm). A total of 113,475 unigenes were annotated with an average length of 836 bp (N50 = 1,536). The comparative RNA-seq study between the control (CK) and IBA-treated (T) buds showed significant differentially expressed unigenes (494 upregulated and 2086 downregulated). The IBA influenced major biological processes including metabolic process, the cellular process, and single-organism process. For cellular component category, cell, cell part, organelle, membrane, and organelle part were mainly affected. In addition, catalytic activity and binding were primarily affected in the molecular function categories. Furthermore, the expression of genes related to plant hormones and signaling pathways was analyzed by qRT-PCR, which was consistent with the RNA-seq expression profile. This study provides new insights into the IBA response to the bud sprouting in sugarcane based on RNA sequencing, and generated information could help further research on breeding improvement of sugarcane.

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