干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Finger millet [Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn] is an excellent food and forage crop of arid and semiarid areas in Africa and Asia. It is well adapted to drought, heat, high salinity, poor soil fertility and low pH with an efficient C-4 carbon fixation mechanism for high yield potential. To normalize the target gene expression data, the identification of suitable reference genes is essential. Ten candidate reference genes were selected and their expression stability was analyzed in various samples treated with different abiotic stress conditions. Five different statistical algorithms: geNorm, NormFinder, BestKeeper, Delta Ct, and RefFinder were used to determine the stability of these genes. Our results revealed GAPDH, EEF1a, ACT and CYC as highly stable reference genes and PP2A and eIF4A as least stable reference genes across all the samples and suggesting that these genes could be used for accurate transcript normalization under abiotic stress. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on identification of suitable reference genes for accurate transcript normalization using qRT-PCR in finger millet under abiotic stress.