Objective   Transcriptomes of different guava cultivars were obtained for comparison.

  Methods  Transcriptome sequencing by Illumina Hwaseq 2 500 was conducted on 8-9 mature fruit pulp from 8 varieties of Psidium guajava Linn, namely Red Heart (HX), Rainbow (CH), Purplish Red (ZH), Crystal (SJ), Shuzhen (XZ), Colored-leaf B (CYB), Colored-leaf (CY), and Purple Star (ZX).

  Results  By comparing to the database, 126979 Unigenes of an average length of 766 bp with a N₅₀ of 1654 bp and a N₉₀ of 267 bp were identified. There were 27274 genes co-expressed in the 8 cultivars. The PCA and differential gene expression cluster analyses showed that the differences on the function expressions between the genes of SJ and CYB was less than those between ZH and other cultivars. SJ and CYB were clustered in a category and HX, CH, XZ, CY, and ZX in a different category, while ZH significantly differentiated from the other cultivars.

  Conclusion  The substantial amount of transcription data secured from this study could be useful for the classification as well as the expression and identification of functional genes of guava germplasms.