A drought stress transcriptome profiling as the first genomic resource for white teak - Gamhar - (Gmelina arborea Roxb) and related species

Background Gmelina (Gmelina arborea Roxb), also known as white teak is a tropical deciduous tree native from moist tropical forests of Asia. It has been successfully introduced in equatorial Africa, as well as central and south America. Gmelina is known for its very fast growing rate, its intrinsic disease, fire and drought tolerance, as well as the quality of its wood which is suitable for different types of uses such as paper pulping, plywood or particle board industry, furniture and light constructions. In addition, gmelina is considered a pioneer plant species capable of rapidly colonizing eroded or low nutritional quality lands, which makes it interesting for reforestation or landscape restoration programs. Despite its ecological and increasing economic importance, very little is known about the biology of this species and its remarkable field behavior such as drought tolerance, at the genetic, molecular and biochemical levels. Genomic tools have recently increased the numbers and volume of genomic resources for several crop plants and trees and have contributed to enlarge our knowledge on basic aspects of plant biology, population dynamics or phylogeny; furthermore, they represent valuable sources of candidate genes and new molecular markers to assist breeding programs. Biological sequences reported to date in public databases and belonging to Gmelina do not exceed 20 entries: this very narrow availability of genetic information is the main bottleneck to initiate molecular breeding programs in Gmelina arborea. We report here the first genomic resource for this tropical tree based on an RNAseq transcriptome profiling approach.