Transcriptome analysis of salinity responses in Sorghum

Increased soil salinity, which is reported to be one of the serious abiotic stresses, exerts severe limitations on plant growth and hence crop production all over the world. Therefore, thorough understanding of salt tolerant mechanisms in crops and adaptation of packages of suitable land and crop management technologies to address this issue has become one of the desired objectives in crop/plant breeding. Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is considered to be moderately tolerant to soil salinity but its salt responsive mechanism is yet to be fully understood. In this study, two sorghum genotypes, the salt tolerant line Mota Maradi and the salt sensitive line BAZ9504 relative to the fully sequenced reference line BTx623, were analyzed. Physiological and molecular studies were performed to provide mechanisms of salt tolerance at different levels. In the comparative studies using these two sorghum verities along with BTx623, significant differences on physiological performances were observed with respect to growth, photosynthetic capacity, Na+, K+ accumulation profiles, tissue level proline and sucrose accumulation. By utilizing the next generation sequencing techniques, tissue level transcriptomic profiles of these sorghum genotypes were generated for better understanding of the molecular basis of salt stress response.