Gene expression in roots of sugarcane hybrid cultivars exposed to drought stress and regular irrigation

We sequenced the root transcriptome (mRNA) of six sugarcane hybrid cultivars (RB867515, RB92579, SP79-1011, RB855113, RB855536, SP80-3280). The roots were exposed to two treatments: regular irrigation (control) and, drought stress. After five days of water deprivation in drought stressed treatment, we individually sampled roots from three biological replications of each combination between treatment and cultivar for RNA extraction. We performed RNA-Seq for the 36 paired-end libraries with Illumina HiSeq2500 equipment. In addition, in our study, we classified the cultivars as tolerant (RB867515, SP79-1011), susceptible (SP80-3280, RB92579) and, intermediary (RB855536, RB855113) to drought stress, regarding the number of live plants remaining after ten days of water deprivation in a complementary experiment.