Decapitation is common in horticulture for altering plant architecture. The decapitation of chrysanthemum plants breaks apical dominance and leads to more flowers on lateral branches, resulting in landscape flowers with good coverage. We performed both third- and second-generation transcriptome sequencing of the second buds of chrysanthemum. This third-generation transcriptome is the first sequenced third-generation transcriptome of chrysanthemum, revealing alternative splicing events, lncRNAs, and transcription factors. Aside from the classic hormones, the expression of jasmonate-related genes changed because of this process. Sugars also played an important role in this process, with upregulated expression of sucrose transport-related and TPS genes. We constructed a model of the initial growth of the second buds after decapitation. Auxin export and sugar influx activated the growth of these buds, while the JA-Ile caused by wounding inhibited the expression of CycD genes from 0 h to 6 h. After wound recovery, cytokinins accumulated in the second buds and might have induced ARR12 expression to upregulate CycD gene expression from 6 h to 48 h, together with sugars. Therefore, jasmonates, cytokinins, sugars, and auxin work together to determine the fate of the buds of plants with short internodes, such as chrysanthemum.
Keywords: Chrysanthemum morifolium; decapitation; phytohormone; shoot branching; third-generation transcriptome.