Climate change leads to drought that critically threatens global food security by limiting plant growth and crop productivity. Rapeseed, a vital source of feed, food, and oil, is highly vulnerable to this stress. To mitigate this, novel agricultural materials such as superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) offer a promising short-term solution to alleviate drought stress. Furthermore, understanding how these polymers enhance drought tolerance can help identify candidate genes for long-term breeding programs. Notably, this study is the first comprehensive investigation to evaluate SAP effects at both molecular and biological levels using mRNA sequencing, providing significant insights into their drought-mitigating mechanisms in rapeseed. Messenger RNA sequencing (mRNA-seq) was conducted on five groups: two fossil-based polymers (MERCK, SWT), one natural-based polymer (ABG), a stress control (CS), and a well-watered control (CN), to assess induced transcriptomic changes. Following the International Seed Testing Association guidelines, the experiment was conducted on rapeseed for 7 days (Rajendra Prasad in Seed science and technology: biology, production, quality, Springer Nature Singapore, 2023). Afterwards, indexed cDNA libraries were prepared for mRNA sequencing using the Illumina NovaSeq X Plus platform. For this study, we collected 10 mRNA sequencing samples, distributed across the different treatment groups. The resulting FASTQ files from sequencing are publicly available in the European Nucleotide Archive under accession number ERP180393.
Abdolmaleki et al. (Fri,) studied this question.