Parthenocissus tricuspidata is a climbing plant of the grape family (Vitaceae) that grows on roadside stone banks and the walls of buildings (He et al. 2011). It is mainly used as an important orna...

Tetradium ruticarpum, previously and commonly known as Evodia rutaecarpa, is a tree that produces a fruit which is one of the most important traditional Chinese medicine herbs in China (Zhao et al....

‘Cuiguan’ pear (Pyrus pyrifolia cv. ‘Cuiguan’) is an early ripening pear variety cultivated in southern China. In July 2018, an unknown disease occurred on 5%-10% of 5000 post-harvest ‘Cuiguan’ pea...

Aluminum-activated malate transporter (ALMT) channels mediate root malate efflux, a key response for plant survival in acidic, aluminum-toxic soils. The acidophilic genus Vaccinium is horticulturally important, yet its ALMT family has remained uncharacterized. Leveraging two newly available chromosome-level genomes (Vaccinium darrowii and Vaccinium duclouxii), we present the first genus-wide characterization of this family. Across 11 angiosperms we identified 145 non-redundant ALMT loci, partitioned into six major subfamilies. MCScanX synteny revealed compact retention rather than expansion: diploid Vaccinium genomes encode only 8–10 ALMTs each, with at most one intra-species syntenic paralog pair, versus multiple whole-genome-duplication-derived pairs in apple (Malus domestica, 24 loci). Pairwise Ka/Ks was elevated within Vaccinium in three subfamilies, and codon-based PAML branch-site tests detected Bonferroni-significant positive selection on terminal Vaccinium branches in Subfamilies 5 and 4 (2ΔlnL = 40.65 and 12.95), yielding three Bayes Empirical Bayes candidate sites in Subfamily 5 (F249, E410, L411) and two in Subfamily 4 (E249, G399); Subfamily 2 was non-significant and is interpreted as relaxed constraint. All candidate residues map to C-terminal cytoplasmic regulatory regions rather than the transmembrane pore. These findings indicate that the compact Vaccinium ALMT repertoire retained its ancestral channel architecture while accumulating lineage-associated divergence in cytoplasmic regulatory regions; the identified residues are candidates for downstream functional validation rather than demonstrated drivers of acid-soil adaptation.