The development of nitrogen fertilizer green and efficient application technology by exploring the mechanism of efficient sorghum N use is important for sustainable development of sorghum industry as well as barren marginal land development and utilization. This study was conducted in 2018, 2019, and 2020 at Shenyang, China, using the nitrogen-efficient sorghum variety Liaonian No. 3 as material. The correlation between soil microbial species, diversity, and metabolic pathways with photosynthetic parameters and yield traits was analyzed to elucidate the mechanisms of nitrogen utilization and photosynthetic material production in sorghum under four fertilizer application patterns. The results showed that 17 populations of soil inter-root microorganisms were active in the organic fertilizer + 0 kg per hm2 of nitrogen (N0Y) model, and the abundance of two key populations, Comamonadaceae and Ellin5301, was significantly increased. Soil microorganisms regulated sorghum growth mainly through 30 pathways, focus including ko00540, ko00471, ko00072 and ko00550, of which ko02030 (Bacterial chemotaxis) and ko00072 (Synthesis and degradation of ketone bodies) played the most critical role. The functional analysis of soil microbial populations revealed that N0Y fertilizer model significantly reduced the intracellular trafficking, secretion. In addition, vesicular transport of microorganisms, amino acid transport and metabolism and nucleotide transport and metabolism played a key role in the regulation of population function. Overall, the N0Y model of N-efficient sorghum can achieve high levels of photosynthetic material production and higher yield formation through regulation of population activities and metabolic pathways of loamy microorganisms, resulting in reduced chemical N application and efficient green production of sorghum.

Sorghum is a high-quality raw material for brewing white wine, and the starch content in seeds has a large impact on brewing quality. Transcriptomic data obtained from a glutinous variety (Liaonian3) and a non-glutinous variety (Liaoza10) at 3, 18, and 30 days after pollination were analyzed to identify genes associated with starch accumulation. The amylopectin content was significantly higher in Liaonian3 compared to Liaoza10, but the amylose content and total starch content were lower. There were 6634 differentially expressed genes found in Liaoza10 between 3 and 18 d after pollination, and 779 differentially expressed genes between 18 and 30 d after pollination. In Liaonian3, there were 6768 differentially expressed genes between 3 and 18 d after pollination, and 7630 differentially expressed genes between 18 and 30 d after pollination. Genes were grouped by expression profiles over the three time points and the profiles were analyzed for enrichment of gene ontology terms and biochemical pathways. Profile 1 (decreasing expression from 3 to 30 d) for Liaoza10 was enriched in ribosomes, metabolic pathways, and carbon metabolic pathways. Profile 0 (decreasing expression from 3 to 18 d and consistent expression from 18 to 30 d) was enriched in pathways related to sugar or starch metabolism. Although the starch accumulation rate in Liaonian3 and Liaoza10 showed a profile of increasing and then decreasing, the expression of genes related to starch synthesis gradually decreased with time since pollination, demonstrating the complexity of starch synthesis. According to orthologous gene alignment and expression analysis, 19 genes such as entrzID_8068390 and entrzID_8066807 were found to be the key genes for starch synthesis and glutinous and non-glutinous differentiation in sorghum grains.

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Sorghum has high salt tolerance, and the localization and discovery of salt tolerance regulatory genes in sorghum is an effective way to develop and utilize saline soils.The aim of this study was to locate sorghum salt tolerance genes using a F 2 segregating population combined with bulked segregation analysis (BSA) sequencing technology to explore the salt tolerance potential of sorghum. The results showed that the effective data percentage of all four samples (salt-tolerant parent, salt-tolerant offspring pool, salt-sensitive parent and salt-sensitive offspring pool) was above 99.90%. By comparing sequencing results of each of the two offspring pools with the reference genome, we found 903, 025 SNP variants and 438,453 InDel variants between the two offspring pools. A total of 163 polymorphic loci were found in the genome-wide screening of SNP-index values close to 0.75 for the salt-tolerant offspring pool and 0.25 for the non-salt-tolerant offspring pool. A total of 20 candidate genes were screened according to ANNOVAR annotation results. The Sobic.001G283700 gene encoding glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferases (GPATs) was found to be closely associated with salt stress tolerance.