Field Crop 2025, Vol.8, No.1, 41-50 http://cropscipublisher.com/index.php/fc 44 Figure 1 The phenotype of the plant materials associated with source-/sink-related yield traits and drought response. (A) The plant phenotype of materials with extremely high (L2) and low (L1) yield traits. (B) The statistical analysis of source-/sink-related yield traits between materials of L1 and L2. (C) The silique phenotype of materials with extremely high (L2) and low (L1) yield traits. (D) Dynamic content of sucrose in source-/sink-tissues of extreme materials during different developmental stages. L1: Low yield-related material; L2: High yield-related material; The number of 15, 25, 35, and 45 mean corresponding days after flowering; S: seeds; P: pericarps; **: significant difference at p< 0.01; *: significant difference at p < 0.05 (Adopted from Yang et al., 2023) 5 Case Study 5.1 Background of the case study Speaking of rapeseed, this thing is really a treasure. You may not know that many of the vegetable oils we usually eat, feed for livestock, and even biodiesel used in cars rely on it (Zhou et al., 2022). However, everyone who has farmed knows that this crop has a natural enemy-drought. Of course, it is not to say that other disasters are not important, but drought is indeed the most troublesome. In the past, people always thought that drought-resistant breeding mainly relied on experience, but now it is different. By analyzing those genes that are "active" in drought, we gradually figured out how rapeseed copes with water shortages. Although the specific mechanism has yet to be studied, these findings have pointed out a clear way for breeding work. In the final analysis, if you want to stabilize the yield of rapeseed, you can't just rely on the old method. You have to understand from the root how it "fights wits and courage" with drought. 5.2 Transcriptome profiling under drought conditions To understand how plants cope with drought, it is not enough to just look at the appearance, you have to see what their genes are doing-to put it bluntly, it is to study which RNAs are activated or silenced during drought (Tan et al., 2020). This experiment used two types of rapeseed: drought-tolerant Q2 and drought-sensitive Qinyou8. Not only did they measure the response during drought, but they also looked at the changes after watering was restored. The results are quite interesting. In Q2, about 5 500 genes were downregulated and 7 000 were upregulated; and Qinyou8 was even more exaggerated, with more than 7 800 downregulated and more than 10 000 upregulated (Figure 2). However, the numbers are just appearances. What is more important is the discovery of those inconspicuous long-chain non-coding RNAs-although they are not directly involved in encoding proteins, they play an important role in drought response and even form a complex regulatory network. This may explain why the drought resistance of the two rapeseeds is so different.
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