Fig. 4: Reciprocal grafting between wild-type and either MIR2111-5 overexpression or STTM2111 plants.

a–e Nodulation at 28 days after inoculation (dai) in wild-type (a, b) and MIR2111-5ox (c, d) rootstocks grafted with wild-type (a, c) and MIR2111-5ox (b, d) scions. Scale bars: 1 mm. e Nodule numbers on rootstocks of grafted plants (28 dai). f qRT-PCR analyses of mature miR2111s, MIR2111-5, and TML in rootstocks of the grafted plants (5 dai). OX represents MIR2111-5ox plants. All values were normalized by the mean value of wild-type self-grafting plants. n = 3 individual biological replicates for each treatment. Bars indicate mean values. Two-sided Student’s t test was used to determine statistical difference compared with wild-type self-grafting plants: *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001; n.s. not significant. g Nodule numbers in rootstocks of grafted plants between WT and STTM2111 (21 dai). STTM represents STTM2111 plants. e–g Scatterplots show individual biological replicates as dots. Different letters indicate significant differences (P < 0.05) from Tukey’s honestly significant difference test. e, g Bars indicate mean ± standard deviation.