Transcriptome and phytohormone profiling of stamen and pistil in Brassica napus under boron deficiency

Plant reproduction is a fundamental requirement for plants to sustain genetic inheritance. In the perspective of plant nutrition, such process is strongly influenced by boron deficiency (-B) and as documented about a century ago. To date, little is known about the mechanism of boron deficiency-induced fertility reduction. In this study, we successfully established a cultivation system for Brassica napus to precisely manipulate boron supply when the generative stage initiates. We dissected the stamen and pistil of early-developing Brassica napus flower buds for transcriptome and phytohormone analysis, and demonstrated pistil and stamen showed distinct responding processes to -B. In addition, we revealed that auxin (IAA)-related compounds and several IAA-biosynthesis genes may play important roles in reproductive organ responding to -B, suggesting the IAA metabolism pathway seems to play a crucial role in -B induced reproductive organ abortion process. Taken together, we created a reliable system to study boron deficiency induced fertility reduction, by which generated the first transcriptome result for dissected stamen and pistil under different boron regimes, and suggested IAA metabolism pathway deserves as important target for further study in such regimes.