De novo transcriptome assembly for pericarp in Litchi chinesis Sonn. cv. Feizixiao and identification of differentially expressed genes in response to Mg Foliar Nutrient

- 50809 unigenes were assembled.
- 1226 unigenes were found to be differently expressed in response to Mg.
- Mg has a function on the color of FZX pericarp at the molecular level.

Litchi is a subtropical fruit crop indigenous to South China. The pericarp of the variety Feizixiao does not display the overall bright red hue at harvest, i.e. “stay-green” phenomenon. This phenomenon could be solved by Mg foliar nutrient sprays. This study will attempt to discover the molecular mechanisms in litchi pericarp under Mg treatment by sequencing and de novo assembling the transcriptome. We assembled 50809 unigenes with an average length of 735.47 bp; approximately 55.11% (28005) of unigenes could be annotated using the NCBI (National Center of Biotechnology Information) non-redundant (nr) database. Five DGE libraries have been generated from litchi pericarp, and approximately 20 million filtered reads per library were generated. A total of 1226 unigenes were found to be differently expressed in the pair-wise comparisons between any two periods of Mg-treated, and genes encoding key enzymes involved in flavonoid biosynthesis, anthocyanin biosynthesis, ABA signal pathway were identified.