Drought stress poses a critical threat to global crop yields and sustainable agriculture. The
GASA
genes are recognized for their pivotal role in stress tolerance and plant growth, but little is known about how they function in sunflowers. The investigation aimed to identify and elucidate the role of
HaGASA
genes in conferring sunflowers with drought tolerance. Twenty-seven different
HaGASA
gene family members were found in this study that were inconsistently located across eleven sunflower chromosomes. Phylogeny analysis revealed that the sunflower
HaGASA
genes were divided into five subgroups by comparing
GASA
genes with those from Arabidopsis, peanut, and soybean, with members within each subgroup displaying similar conserved motifs and gene structures. In-silico evaluation of cis-regulatory elements indicated the existence of specific elements associated with stress-responsiveness being the most abundant, followed by hormone, light, and growth-responsive elements. Transcriptomic data from the NCBI database was utilized to assess the
HaGASA
genes expression profile in different sunflower varieties under drought conditions. The
HaGASA
genes expression across ten sunflower genotypes under drought stress, revealed 14 differentially expressed
HaGASA
genes, implying their active role in the plant’s stress response. The expression in different organs revealed that
HaGASA2
,
HaGASA11
,
HaGASA17
,
HaGASA19
,
HaGASA21
and
HaGASA26
displayed maximum expression in the stem. Our findings implicate
HaGASA
genes in mediating sunflower growth maintenance and adaptation to abiotic stress, particularly drought. The findings, taken together, provided a basic understanding of the structure and potential functions of
HaGASA
genes, setting the framework for further functional investigations into their roles in drought stress mitigation and crop improvement strategies.
Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12864-024-10860-8.
