Stevia rebaudiana (S. rebaudiana) is a herbaceous and perennial plant belonging to Asteraceae family. The genus stevia is well known as a natural producer of sweetener comprising non-caloric and non-carcinogenic steviol glycosides. In recent years, the capability in producing natural sweetner has increased the demand for S. rebaudiana as substitute of processed sugars. Flowering phase of S. rebaudiana has shown to affect the content of steviol glycosides in the leaves. Steviol glycosides level is the highest at the time of flower bud formation and lowest at time preceding and following flower bud formation. Therefore, sequencing and analysing the genes that are involved in flowering phase will provide platform for gene manipulation in increasing steviol glycosides content. The Stevia transcriptome data that include two stages of growth (before flowering and after flowering), were obtained using Illumina RNA-seq technology and can be accessed at NCBI Sequence Read Archive under Accession No. SRX6362785 and SRX6362784.

Stevia rebaudiana is a medicinal plant recommended to diabetic or obese patients as an alternative sweetener owing to its low-calorie property. Previous studies have found that the stevioside level is highest at the time of flower bud formation and lowest at the time of preceding and following flower bud formation. Hence, this study aims to identify the genes involved in the flowering of local S. rebaudiana accession MS007 by investigating the transcriptomic data of two stages of growth, before flowering (BF) and after flowering (AF) that were deposited under accession number SRX6362785 and SRX6362784 at the NCBI SRA database. The transcriptomic study managed to annotate 108299 unigenes of S. rebaudiana with 8871 and 9832 genes that were differentially expressed in BF and AF samples, respectively. These genes involved in various metabolic pathways related to flower development, response to stimulus as well as photosynthesis. Pheophorbide A oxygenase ( PAO ), eukaryotic translation initiation factor 3 subunit E ( TIF3E1 ), and jasmonate ZIM domain-containing protein 1 ( JAZ1 ) were found to be involved in the flower development. The outcome of this study will help further research in the manipulation of the flowering process, especially in the breeding programme to develop photo-insensitive Stevia plant.