Sugar apple (Annona squamosa), a popular fruit with high medicinal and
nutritional properties, is widely cultivated in tropical South Asia and
America. The malformed flower is a major problem for sugar apple,
significantly reducing its fruit yields. However, little information is
available on the differences between normal and malformed flowers of sugar
apple. To study these differences, Kaidong Liu from the Lingnan Normal
University in China prepared cDNA libraries from normal and malformed
flowers independently for sequencing.

The data generated a total of 70,189,896 reads that were integrated and
assembled into 55,097 unigenes. A large number of differentially expressed
[www.isaaa.org] genes
(DEGs) were then identified. Among these DEGs were 701 flower
development-associated transcription factor encoding genes. Furthermore, a
large number of flowering- and hormone-related DEGs were also identified,
most of which were found to be downregulated in the malformed flowers. The
malformed flowers also displayed lower hormone levels compared to the normal
flowers.

The data from this research will serve as a comprehensive resource for
investigating the regulation mechanism involved in flower development in
sugar apple.

[bmcplantbiol.biomedcentral.com]