Fig. 4: HSAL additive significantly increases iron bioavailability for rice.
a Volcano plot of 2068 significant differential expression genes (DEGs) of rice root tips treated without or with 0.05% HSAL for 12 h; significance threshold: False Discovery Rate (FDR) ≤ 0.05 and Log2(Fold Change) ≥ 1. The list of DEGs was attached in Supplementary Dataset 1. b, c Significantly enriched Gene Ontology (GO) terms in Biological Process b and Molecular Function c categories of these DEGs. GO enrichment was carried out with the over representation Analysis. p-values were calculated by hypergeometric distribution multiple comparison followed by Benjamini-Hochberg adjustment. d Heat-map showing expression pattern of iron transport-related genes affected by 0.05% HSAL. e Representative images showing 0.05% HSAL rescues iron deficiency phenotypes in Nipponbare rice. Rice seedlings were grown under iron deficiency (removed EDTA-Fe(II)) and iron sufficient (36 µM EDTA-Fe(II)), and treated with or without 0.05% HSAL for 10 days. f, g Box plots and scatter plots showing root length f and shoot length g of rice seedlings with and without 0.05% HSAL. Boxes represent the 25th–75th percentile range, white lines represent medians and whiskers show the minimum–maximum range (n = 12 seedlings). h, i Iron content in the roots h and shoots i of rice seedlings upon treatment with 0.05% HSAL. Graphs depict mean with standard deviation (error bars) and individual data points (n = 4 biological replicates). Different letters indicate statistically significant differences based on two-way ANOVA and Tukey’s HSD test analysis (p <  0.05) in f–i.
