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Transcriptome profiling of fully open flowers in a frost-tolerant almond genotype in response to freezing stress

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A Correction to this article was published on 12 October 2017

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Abstract

Spring frost is a major limiting abiotic stress for the cultivation of almonds [Prunus dulcis (Mill.)] in Mediterranean areas or the Middle East. Spring frost, in particular, damages almond fully open flowers, resulting to significant reduction in yield. Little is known about the genetic factors expressed after frost stress in Prunus spp. as well as in almond fully open flowers. Here, we provide the molecular signature of pistils of fully open flowers from a frost-tolerant almond genotype. The level of frost tolerance in this genotype was determined for all three flowering stages and was confirmed by comparing it to two other cultivars using several physiological analyses. Afterwards, comprehensive expression profiling of genes expressed in fully open flowers was performed after being exposed to frost temperatures (during post-thaw period). Clean reads, 27,104,070 and 32,730,772, were obtained for non-frost-treated and frost-treated (FT) libraries, respectively. A total of 62.24 Mb was assembled, generating 50,896 unigenes and 66,906 transcripts. Therefore, 863 upregulated genes and 555 downregulated genes were identified in the FT library. Functional annotation showed that most of the upregulated genes were related to various biological processes involved in responding to abiotic stress. For the first time, a highly expressed cold-shock protein was identified in the reproductive organ of fruit trees. The expression of six genes was validated by RT-PCR. As the first comprehensive analysis of open flowers in a frost-tolerant almond genotype, this study represents a key step toward the molecular breeding of fruit tree species for frost tolerance.

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Change history

  • 12 October 2017

    In the original publication of the article, the affiliation of the third author has been incorrectly published as University of Yazd. However, the correct affiliation is Yazd University.

Abbreviations

RNA-seq:

RNA sequencing

RT-PCR:

Real-time quantitative PCR

POX:

Peroxidase

CAT:

Catalase

EL:

Electrolyte leakage

GO:

Gene ontology

FDR:

False discovery rate

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful to Dr Vahid Abdossi for providing general support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agriculture, Iranian Research Organization for Science and Technology (IROST), P.O. Box 33535111, Tehran, Iran

    Batool Hosseinpour

  2. Department of Horticulture, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Sadegh Sepahvand

  3. Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Yazd, Yazd, Iran

    Kazem Kamali Aliabad

  4. Department of Animal and Poultry Science, College of Aburaihan, University of Tehran, P.O. Box 3391653755, Pakdasht, Tehran, Iran

    MohammadReza Bakhtiarizadeh

  5. Horticultural Sciences Research Institute (HSRI), Karaj, Iran

    Ali Imani

  6. Young Researchers and Elite Club, North Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

    Reza Assareh

  7. University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Seyed Alireza Salami

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  1. Batool Hosseinpour
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  2. Sadegh Sepahvand
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  3. Kazem Kamali Aliabad
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  4. MohammadReza Bakhtiarizadeh
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Contributions

SS, AA, and BH performed sample preparations and physiological experiments; SS and BH optimized RNA extraction protocol; MRB performed the RNA-seq data and statistical analyses, SAS, RA, and BH carried out expression analysis; BH and KKA conceived and designed the experiments; and BH drafted the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Batool Hosseinpour or MohammadReza Bakhtiarizadeh.

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Conflict interest

No conflicts of interest declared.

Additional information

Communicated by S. Hohmann.

A correction to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-017-1380-7.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

438_2017_1371_MOESM1_ESM.tif

Fig. S1 Almond flower at popcorn stage. A) An intact flower at popcorn stage. B) Frost-damaged pistil of flower at popcorn stage. (TIFF 1582 kb)

438_2017_1371_MOESM2_ESM.tif

Fig. S2 Small fruit of almond. A) Cross section of an intact small fruit. B) Frost-damaged small fruit of almond. (TIFF 1507 kb)

438_2017_1371_MOESM3_ESM.jpg

Fig. S3 The rate of frost damage in different tolerant and non-tolerant almond trees. The percentage of frost damage in 6–8 and Nonpareil as tolerant trees, compared to Shahroud12 as a non-tolerant tree at different flowering stages after exposure to a series of frost temperatures. (JPEG 258 kb)

438_2017_1371_MOESM4_ESM.tif

Fig. S4 Percentage coverage of P. persica peptide sequences to predicted almond peptide sequences. 60% showed complete coverage (100%) with peach peptides. (TIFF 257 kb)

Supplementary File 1. GO annotation of almond reference transcriptome. (XLS 201 kb)

438_2017_1371_MOESM6_ESM.xlsx

Supplementary File 2. List of upregulated and downregulated genes in fully open flowers of almond under frost condition. (XLSX 3400 kb)

Supplementary material 7 (DOCX 16 kb)

Supplementary material 8 (DOCX 19 kb)

Supplementary material 9 (DOCX 24 kb)

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Hosseinpour, B., Sepahvand, S., Kamali Aliabad, K. et al. Transcriptome profiling of fully open flowers in a frost-tolerant almond genotype in response to freezing stress. Mol Genet Genomics 293, 151–163 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-017-1371-8

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