show Abstracthide AbstractGinger (Zingiber officinale Rosc.) is well-known for the medicinal and culinary uses of its rhizomes, which are underground stems that serve roles in propagation, new territory invasion, and bioactive compound storage. An earlier expressed sequence tag project suggested that rhizome-specific genes exist that play roles in controlling rhizome differentiation, development and growth. This investigation compares quantitative transcriptomic data from rhizomes to expression profiles in other ginger tissues, including root, stem, rhizome internode, young leaf and old leaf, leading to identification of rhizome-specific genes.