Paeonia lactiflora cultivar:Hongyan Zhenghui Raw sequence reads

Herbaceous peony (Paeonia lactiflora Pall.) is a popular ornamental plant species often used to arrange flower borders, flower beds, potted plants, etc. In addition, P. lactiflora has also emerged as a high-end cut flower in the international market in recent years and requires thick and upright stems. However, in the production practice, we found that the P. lactiflora inflorescence stem was easy to bend or break and could not support fresh flowers, which severely reduced the quality and commercial value of its cut flowers, becoming the main bottleneck restricting the improvement of P. lactiflora cut flower production. Aa an important indoleamine compound, melatonin plays a key role in plant development. For example, melatonin regulates seed germination, root development, photoprotection, flowering, leaf senescence, seed yield, and fruit ripening. Besides, melatonin also play an important role in alleviating abiotic stresses from cold, heat, drought, salt, to heavy metals. Our previous study showed that exogenous melatonin spraying can significantly improve the inflorescence stem strength of Paeonia lactiflora. Therefore, application of an transcriptomic analyses can be effective in exploring the mechanisms of how melatonin application enhancing mechanical strength delineating mechanisms at the molecular level and excavating some key genes.