ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Breeding
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1648313
This article is part of the Research TopicGenomic and Metabolomic Diversity in Fruit Plants: Impacts of Breeding TechniquesView all 3 articles
Combined analysis of transcriptome and WGCNA revealed JA mediated the low male fertility of loquat H30-6
Provisionally accepted
- 1Southwest University, Chongqing, China
- 2Chongqing University of Education, Chongqing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The number of seeds is an important factor limiting the palatability and processing efficiency of loquat. Loquat H30-6 has been found to bear fruits with few seeds, which is attributed to its low male fertility. To investigate the molecular mechanism underlying the low male fertility of H30-6, in this study, RNA-seq was performed using pre-meiotic, meiotic and mature anthers from H30-6 and the other two loquat varieties with normal male fertility. The results indicated that a total of 331 the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified between H30-6 and the other two loquats and these DEGs were mainly enriched in pathways related to jasmonic acid (JA). WGCNA revealed that module 'green' were highly positively correlated with seed quantity (r = 0.46), suggesting that module 'green' is the candidate module. Enrichment analysis showed that genes in module 'green' were also primarily enriched in JA biosynthetic process, regulation of JA mediated signaling pathway and response to JA, implying that JA may play a key role in the molecular mechanism underlying the low male fertility of H30-6. The detection of UPLC-MS/M indicated that the contents of JA and its derivatives in the flower bud of H30-6 were significantly lower than those in 'Huabai 1' (with normal male fertility). Besides, exogenous application of MeJA improved the pollen quantity per anther and seed numbers of H30-6. Our work indicates that the suppression of JA-related gene expression and the low JA content in immature flower buds may be key factors for H30-6 male sterility. These findings provide a theoretical basis for seedless breeding of loquats and lay the foundation for the development of stamens in fruit trees.
Keywords: Loquat, low male fertility, Seedless fruit, Transcriptome, WGCNA, Jasmonic acid
Received: 17 Jun 2025; Accepted: 27 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Pan, Xia, Duan, Jing, Dang and Guo. 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:
Jiangbo Dang, Southwest University, Chongqing, China
Qigao Guo, Southwest University, Chongqing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.