Abstract:The seeds of Polygonatum cyrtonema have a comprehensive dormancy, which seriously restricts its production and industrial development. The seed dormancy was broken by using warm sand storage treatment, and the changes in metabolomics, transcriptomics at six stages of dormancy release and germination were analyzed. The results showed that amino acid metabolism and synthesis played a key role in the process of dormancy release and germination of P. cyrtonema seeds. The correlation between five metabolites (l-threonine, l-glutamic acid, indole, S-adenosylmethionine and choline) and ten differentially expressed genes in the amino acid metabolism and synthesis related pathways was analyzed. Adenosine diphosphate, alanine-tryptophan, coumarin 151, loniceroside, N-methylthreonine and sedoheptulose-7-phosphate were identified as important characteristic molecules for the germination of P. cyrtonema seeds, and ten related genes were also identified. The expression trends of some genes were verified by qPCR. The key metabolic pathways and gene regulatory networks were revealed for the release of seed dormancy of P. cyrtonema from the levels of metabolite changes and molecular mechanisms, which would provide a theoretical basis for further understanding the molecular mechanism of seed dormancy release and optimizing the germination conditions of P. cyrtonema seeds.
