Fig. 4: OsPIL13 regulates iWUE and iWUE_FL under a combined FL-DS condition.

A A nucleotide “G” at v3 SNP was deleted by CRISPR/CAS9 in the background of the WYG7 rice line (PIL13^v3m). B Image of WYG7 and PIL13^v3m at the grain filling stage. The white vertical bar represents a scale of 10 cm. C Gene expression levels of OsPIL13 in WYG7 and PIL13^v3m rice line. D iWUE_FL in WYG7 and PIL13^v3m rice line following different days of FL-DS treatment. E Gene expression levels of OsPIL13 in WYG7 and OsPIL13 overexpression (OE) lines. F Western blot showing OsPIL13 expression in three OE lines. G Image of WYG7 and three OsPIL13-OE lines at their grain filling stage. The white vertical bar represents a scale of 10 cm. H iWUE_FL in WYG7, and three OsPIL13-OE rice lines following different days of FL-DS. I, J Stomatal aperture dynamics during FL. For panel (I), the shapes of stomatal apertures were marked in red circles. Bar, 10 μm. For panels (C, D), the symbols “*,” “**,” and “***” were used to represent the significant differences between FL-DS and CK at P < 0.05, 0.01, and 0.001, respectively, based on Student’s t test. ns non-significant. Each bar data represents the mean of n replicates ±s.d.: n = 3 (independent replicates) for panel (C) and n = 7 (individual plants) for panel (D). For panels (E, H), different letters represent significant differences among three OsPIL13-OE lines and WYG7 based on one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s HSD tests (P < 0.05). Each bar data represents the mean of n replicates ±s.d.: n = 3 (independent replicates) for panel (E) and n = 7 (individual plants) for panel (H).