Kiwifruit has high nutritional, medicinal and economic value. However, it is susceptible to various adverse conditions during its growth and development, including biotic and abiotic stresses. The leucine-rich repeat receptor-like proteins (LRR-RLPs) have been identified in several plants and have been found to play important roles in growth and development, signal transduction and stress response. However, their study in kiwifruit has received limited attention.

Researchers from the Wuhan Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have analyzed the LRR-RLP genes in kiwifruit, including 4-p;lathe identification of gene family members, their physicochemical properties, phylogenetic relationships, and chromosomal positions, and determined their expression levels under biotic and abiotic stress.

According to the researchers, at the same time point, the number of differentially expressed LRR-RLPs in 'Huate' kiwifruit was higher than that in 'Hongyang' kiwifruit. In addition, the expression level of some genes in ' Hongyang' kiwifruit did not change significantly, but showed a significant trend of change in 'Huate' kiwifruit, including Actinidia39875.t1, Actinidia35026.t1, Actinidia12020.t1 and Actinidia34764.t1.

Furthermore, there were 27, 31 and 20 differentially expressed LRR-RLPs genes under heat stress, waterlogging stress and copper stress, respectively, indicating that LRR-RLPs was involved in the resistance process of kiwifruit to abiotic stress.

This study indicates that kiwifruit LRR-RLPs play important roles in both biotic and abiotic stress responses, and also provides an important basis for further elucidating the molecular mechanisms of plant immunity and breeding kiwifruit varieties with enhanced resistance.

The study, entitled "Genome-Wide Identification and Expression Analysis of Kiwifruit Leucine-Rich Repeat Receptor-Like Proteins Reveal Their Roles in Biotic and Abiotic Stress Responses," was published in International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the International Science and Technology Cooperation Program of Hubei Province, and the Key Research and Development Program of Hubei Province, etc.