ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Physiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1601658
This article is part of the Research TopicNurturing Resilience in Fruit Trees: Physiological and Molecular Mechanisms of Biotic and Abiotic StressView all 3 articles
Transcriptome and VcCADs Gene Family Analyses Reveal Mechanisms of Blight Resistance in Rabbiteye Blueberry
Provisionally accepted
Shanshan Lu1Wei Liu1Lijuan Yang1Cuilian Wu2
Zhangyang Dai1Mingliang Zhu1
Xuan Gao1Feng He1
Jia Xin Xiao1*
Bo Zhu1*- 1School of Life Sciences, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu, Anhui Province, China
- 2Taihu Vocational and Technical School, Taihu County, Anqing City, Wuhu, China
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Blueberry branch blight is a severe plant disease primarily caused by Neofusicoccum parvum. In this study, one-year-old branches of two rabbiteye blueberries (Vaccinium virgatum): resistant Tifblue ('TF') and susceptible Climax ('DF') were selected as experimental materials, the physiological parameters of two cultivars pre-and post-N. parvum inoculation. Transcriptomic analysis and comprehensive gene family characterization were conducted to examine the differential gene expression.The results indicated that 'TF' exhibited higher lignin content and activity levels of peroxidase enzymes (POD), phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL), and cinnamyl alcohol dehydrogenase (CAD) compared to 'DF'. RNA-sequence analysis revealed that at 24 hours post-inoculation, there were 136 and 121 differentially expressed genes related to lignin synthesis in 'TF' and 'DF', respectively. The analysis of these DEGs revealed that numerous of key enzyme genes in lignin synthesis pathways, including PAL, 4CL, CCR, CAD, HCT, COMT and POD were annotated. Additionally, we characterized the CAD gene family, identifying 93 CAD coding genes at the blueberry genome level, which were classified into four subgroups. Most CAD gene promoters contained response elements associated with plant stress resistance pathways. QRT-PCR experiments demonstrated that the expression levels of VcCAD8 and VcCAD62 genes were significantly upregulated at 24 hours post-inoculation. These findings suggest that VcCADs enhance lignin synthesis, improve the resistance of blueberries to shoot blight, and provide novel insights into the defense mechanisms of blueberries against N. parvum.
Keywords: Rabbiteye blueberry, Neofusicoccum parvum, Lignin, Cinnamyl alcohol dehydrogenase, Shoot blight
Received: 28 Mar 2025; Accepted: 02 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lu, Liu, Yang, Wu, Dai, Zhu, Gao, He, Xiao and Zhu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jia Xin Xiao, School of Life Sciences, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu, Anhui Province, China
Bo Zhu, School of Life Sciences, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu, Anhui Province, China
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