Abstract: Exogenous GA3 was used to break the dormancy of Jinxiang aerial bulbs. High throughput sequencing technology was used to sequence the transcriptome of dormant and GA3-treated aerial bulbs. To analyze and screen differentially expressed genes in response to exogenous GA3，and to explore the relationship between differentially expressed genes and the release of aerial bulb dormancy by GA3. The results showed that exogenous GA3 could effectively break the dormancy of aerial bulbs；4 588 up-regulated genes and 55 857 down-regulated genes were obtained by transcriptome sequencing；28 107 differentially expressed genes were annotated in KEGG；among which the most differentially expressed genes were annotated in metabolic pathway；followed by genetic information processing pathway. More differentially expressed genes were enriched in plant hormone signal transduction pathway and the enrichment results were significant. Significant differentially expressed genes GAI，SLR1，PP2C involved in GA，ABA and ZR signal transduction were screened out. Their expressiones were consistent with the change of endogenous hormone content in aerial bulbs. It was speculated that exogenous GA3 could activate the biosynthesis and signal transduction of gibberellin by inhibiting the expression of DELLA gene，a negative regulator of GA signal pathway，so as to release dormancy of aerial bulbs. At the same time，the significant decrease of PYL expression resulted in a relative decrease of abscisic acid content，which was conducive to the relief of dormancy. The results of qRT-PCR showed that the sequencing results were consistent with the actual results，which indicated that the data of transcriptome sequencing were true and reliable.

Key words: garlic, transcriptome sequencing, exogenous GA3, aerial bulb, dormancy release, differentially expressed gene