To validate and annotate the assembled unigenes, the 172,959 unigenes generated were subjected to BLASTX searches (E-value ≤ 1.0e−5) against public protein databases such as NCBI NR, GO, COG and KEGG. As a result, a total of 65,577 (37.91 %) unigenes were predicted to be coding sequence and 66,000 (38.16 %), 50,161 (29.00 %), 27,443 (15.87 %), 19,715 (11.40 %) unigenes had homologous sequences respectively in NR, GO, COG and KEGG databases (Table 3).Table 3Summary statistics of functional annotation for C. faberi vegetative and flower buds unigenes in public databasesPublic protein databaseNo. of unigene hitsPercentage (%)Predict protein number65,57737.91COG27,44315.87NR (E-value < 10−5)66,00038.16GO50,16129.00KEGG19,71511.40