ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agroecology and Ecosystem Services
This article is part of the Research TopicSustainable Solutions for Agricultural Land Degradation and RecoveryView all articles
Mining Key Genes for Ramie (Boehmeria nivea L.) Adaptation to Poor Soil Condition using Transcriptome Analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, China
- 2Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Changsha, China
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Agricultural land degradation threatens food security and agricultural ecosystem sustainability, necessitating phytoremediation to address this problem. Ramie (Boehmeria nivea L.), a cash crop known for its resilience in marginal environments and multiple ecological benefits, represents a promising candidate for this purpose. However, lack of varieties tolerant to poor soil limits this potential, necessitating genetic improvement. This study was therefore designed to identify key genes involved in ramie's adaptation to poor soil conditions and to further explore the underlying molecular mechanisms. Leaf RNA from two ramie varieties, the tolerant Xiangzhu XB (XZ-XB) and the sensitive Xiangzhu 3 (XZ-3), was analyzed using high-throughput sequencing. After processing high-quality clean data, comparative transcriptome analysis revealed 1,908 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between XZ-XB and XZ-3, among which 1,116 were up-regulated and were down-regulated in XZ-XB relative to XZ-3. Notably, four up-regulated DEGs displayed fold changes greater than 9,500, while four down-regulated DEGs showed fold changes exceeding 1,000. Functional annotation linked the DEGs to critical processes as transporter activity, proteases regulation, purple acid phosphatase activity, etc. The findings also revealed that tolerant genotype likely enhance survival under poor soil condition by down-regulating senescence-promoting genes and up-regulating stress-signaling pathways. Results of this study provide valuable genetic resources and candidate targets for molecular breeding of ramie varieties with enhanced resilience to nutrient-poor soils. By the help of molecular breeding, the process will be speed up to develop nutrients-deficiency resilient ramie varieties as a sustainable, plant-based strategy for restoring degraded agricultural ecosystems and enhancing land productivity.
Keywords: Fiber crop, Marginal land, Infertile soil, molecular breeding, gene screening
Received: 30 Sep 2025; Accepted: 27 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wu, Jie, Xing and Jie. 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: Yucheng Jie, fbfcjyc@hunau.edu.cn
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