Maize coding and non-coding RNAs involved in cold stress response in 5-day old seedlings

Due to earlier sowing being a promising strategy for ensuring satisfactory yield and crop quality of maize despite poor environmental conditions resulting from climate change, understanding the plants' response and adaptation to low temperatures in early developmental stages becomes a high priority. Whole transcriptome sequencing (WTS) was performed using two maize inbred lines – one tolerant to cold, LT and one susceptible, LS, at the five-day-old seedling stage. RNA extraction and sequencing were performed after 6h and 24h of cold treatment (10/8° C). The same was done for control seedlings (25°/20°C). The paired-end (PE) 150bp sequencing was performed on the NovaSeq 6000 (Illumina®, CA, USA).