Transcriptome Sequencing Analysis of Salt-Stressed Sorghum Following Inoculation with the Salt-tolerant Plant Growth-Promoting Bacterium Strain S20

Sweet sorghum is an important salt- and drought-tolerant forage and energy crop. Although salt-tolerance mechanisms in sweet sorghum have been studied to some extent, the salt stress responses and growth-promoting molecular mechanisms mediated by salt-tolerant plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) remain unclear.

With the maturation of high-throughput transcriptome sequencing technologies, deciphering the molecular regulatory networks underlying microbe–plant interactions has become feasible. In this study, sweet sorghum under salt stress was inoculated with the salt-tolerant PGPB strain S20, a member of the genus Salinicola. Using high-throughput transcriptome sequencing, we mined key genes and pathways through which the strain regulates sweet sorghum growth and alleviates salt damage, thereby elucidating the molecular mechanism by which this PGPB promotes sweet sorghum growth under salt stress.