Transcriptional profiling of wilt-resistant and wilt-susceptible chickpea cultivars after Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. ciceri (Foc) inoculation

Purpose: Molecular analysis of chickpea-Foc interaction; Methods: Four LongSAGE libraries of wilt-resistant and wilt-susceptible chickpea cultivars prepared after Foc inoculation and sequenced using Ion Torrent PGM. Results: Transcriptome analyses revealed expression of several plant defense and pathogen virulence genes with their peculier expression patterns in wilt-resistant and wilt-susceptible chickpea cultivars. Conclusion: The study identified several candidate Foc resistant genes, which can be used for crop improvement after their functional validation. Overall design: Two chickpea cultivars were used: Digvijay (DV, wilt-resistant) and JG62 (JG, wilt-susceptible). One week old chickpea plants were inoculated with pathogen spores (or mock-inoculated with sterile distilled water) and tissues were collected from 11 timepoints after inoculation. Four LongSAGE libraries [resistant inoculated (DVI), resistant control (DVC), susceptible inoculated (JGI) and susceptible control (JGC)] were generated by normalizing and pooling RNA from the 11 time-points. The libraries were sequenced using Ion Torrent PGM sequencer.