摘要：The desert pioneer plant
Stipagrostis pennata plays an important role in sand fixation, wind prevention, and desert ecosystem recovery. An absence of reference genes greatly limits investigations into the regulatory mechanism by which
S. pennata adapts to adverse desert environments at the molecular and genetic levels. In this study, eight candidate reference genes were identified from rhizosheath development transcriptome data from
S. pennata, and their expression stability in the rhizosheaths at different development stages, in a variety of plant tissues, and under drought stress was evaluated using four procedures, including geNorm, NormFinder, BestKeeper, and RefFinder. The results showed that
GAPDH and
elF were the most stable reference genes under drought stress and in rhizosheath development, and
ARP6 and
ALDH were relatively stable in all plant tissues. In addition,
elF was the most suitable reference gene for all treatments. Analysis of the consistency between the reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) and RNA sequencing data showed that the identified
elF and
GAPDH reference genes were stable during rhizosheath development. These results provide reliable reference genes for assuring the accuracy of RT-qPCR and offer a foundation for further investigations into the genetic responses of
S. pennata to abiotic stress.
