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Background: Common buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) is an important staple food crop in southwest China, where drought stress is one of the largest limiting factors that lead to decreased crop production. To reveal the molecular mechanism of common buckwheat in response to drought stress, we performed a comprehensive transcriptomics study to evaluate gene expression profiles of common buckwheat during PEG-mediated drought treatment. Results: In total, 45 million clean reads were assembled into 53,404 unigenes with an average length of 749 bp and N50 length of 1296 bp. A total of 1329 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified by comparing well-watered and drought-treated plants, out of which 666 were upregulated and 663 were downregulated. Furthermore, we defined the functional characteristics of DEGs using GO and KEGG classifications. GO enrichment analysis showed that the DEGs were significantly overrepresented in four categories, namely, “oxidoreductase activity,” “oxidation–reduction process,” “xyloglucan:xyloglucosyl transferase activity,” and “apoplast.” Using KEGG pathway analysis, a large number of annotated genes were overrepresented in terms such as “plant hormone signal transduction,” “phenylpropanoid biosynthesis,” “photosynthesis,” and “carbon metabolism.” Conclusions: These results can be further exploited to investigate the molecular mechanism of common buckwheat in response to drought treatment and could supply with valuable molecular sources for abiotic-tolerant elite breeding programs in the future.How to cite: Wu Q, Zhao G, Bai X et al. Characterization of the transcriptional profiles in common buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) under PEG-mediated drought stress. Electron J Biotechnol 2019;39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejbt.2019.03.005. Keywords: Abiotic stress, Aluminum, Chlorophyll-binding proteins, Common buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum), Differentially expressed genes (DEGs), Drought stress, RNA sequencing, Transcription factor, Transferase, Triticum

Quinoa has a long history of cultivation and unique nutritional value. Quinoa sprouts can be eaten as leafy vegetables, but their nutritional quality is unknown. Ten quinoa sprout varieties (lines) were evaluated and compared for nutrient and functional composition. All quinoa sprout varieties had high contents of moisture content, reducing sugar, potassium, magnesium, and vitamin C. All varieties contained all essential amino acids, with leucine present in abundance. They had high contents of phenolics, flavonoids, carotenoids (β-carotene and lycopene) as well as chlorophylls a and b. Overall, var. LL-01 had better nutrient and phytochemical composition than other varieties. The potential nutritionalhealth benefits of quinoa sprouts as a vegetable are important for both traditional and contemporary diets.

With the increasing application of nanomaterials, evaluation of the phytotoxicity of nanoparticles has attracted considerable interest. Buckwheat is an economically pseudocereal crop, which is a potential model for investigating the response of plants to hazardous materials. In this study, the response of buckwheat to graphene oxide (GO) was investigated by integrating physiological and transcriptome analysis. GO can penetrate into buckwheat root and stem, and high concentrations of GO inhibited seedlings growth. High concentration of GO improved ROS production and regulated the activities and gene expression of oxidative enzymes, which implying GO may affect plant growth via regulating ROS detoxification. Root and stem exhibit distinct transcriptomic responses to GO, and the GO-responsive genes in stem are more enriched in cell cycle and epigenetic regulation. GO inhibited plant hormone biosynthesis and signaling by analyzing the expression data. Additionally, 97 small secreted peptides (SSPs) encoding genes were found to be involved in GO response. The gene expression of 111 transcription factor (TFs) and 43 receptor-like protein kinases (RLKs) were regulated by GO, and their expression showed high correlation with SSPs. Finally, the TFs-SSPs-RLKs signaling networks in regulating GO response were proposed. This study provides insights into the molecular responses of plants to GO.