Tree bean, Parkia roxburghii (Mimosaceae), is a less known, nutritious and leguminous tree of North-East India (NE) and South-East Asia (SE). In SE Asia, it is distributed in Bangladesh, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand and the Malaysian region. It is a large and spreading tree (upto 25 m height), with pods 10-15 in cluster; each pod measures 25-40 cm in length and 2-4 cm in breadth. Tree bean is an ethnically and economically important vegetable of NE India which is an integral part of food habit of the communities in the area. All parts of Tree bean except roots are used economically as food, ethno-medicine (against dysentery), industrial products (dyes, paper, insecticide, tanning and timber), cosmetics (face wash and shampoo) and as shade crop in tea and coffee plantations. It is a good source of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, micronutrients and dietary fiber and also expected to contain considerable amount of antioxidants.

In spite of such importance, unfortunately the tree bean plants are under threat and there is vast decline in their population in some parts of NE India, especially in the valley of Manipur. This could be due to changing climate, Verticillium wilt disease, mobile radiation, etc., but the real cause is still unknown. In NE India Tree bean is prone to sudden mass-death due to the die-back symptoms, which seriously affects the socio-economic situation of the growers. The problems of die-back symptoms in this tree have also been found to be associated with the infestation of Anoplophora glabripennis (Motchulsky) commonly known as Asian long horned beetle. A succession of transcriptomic and differentially expressed genes analysis provides the first evidence differentiating ongoing molecular process in healthy and declined tree bean plants. Therefore, Tree bean Transcriptome database (ParkRoxTDB)” has been developed, to provide the extensive information of Parkia roxburghii (Mimosaceae) transcriptome.

This database includes the de novo assembly and gene expression analysis of six genotypes of Parkia roxburghii (Mimosaceae) collected from north-east India. Database also contains the information of annotation, transcriptional factors, functional search, protein families and domains, miRNA target prediction and molecular markers such as Single nucleotide polymorphism and Simple sequence repeats.