Fig. 6: AKT2var expression significantly improves resistance of cassava to drought stress.
From: Engineering vascular potassium transport increases yield and drought resilience of cassava
a–f, To induce drought stress in plants from EV and AKT2var lines, all plants were first grown under controlled conditions in the greenhouse for 8 weeks. This was followed by either a 5-week period of drought stress with watering only once a week (drought stress condition) or a 5-week period of daily watering (control condition). After these 5 weeks, an IH was carried out for both conditions. Both conditions were then returned to the watering regime of the control condition for 5 weeks. The FH was carried out after this 5-week recovery period. Panels a–d show representative phenotypes of root tissue from three EV plants (EV-4221, EV-4234 and EV-4243) and three AKT2var plants (AKT2var-4261, AKT2var-4262 and AKT2va-4264) at IH (a,b) and FH (c,d). Root dry weight was determined at IH (n = 7 biological replicates for EV-4221, n = 6 for EV-4234, n = 7 for EV-4243, n = 6 for AKT2var-4261, n = 5 for AKT2var-4262 and n = 7 for AKT2var-4264) (e) and FH (n = 10 and 9 biological replicates for EV-4221, n = 6 for EV-4234, n = 7 for EV-4243, n = 7 and 6 for AKT2var-4261, n = 5 for AKT2var-4262 and n = 10 for AKT2var-4264) (f) for both the control and drought conditions. Images were digitally extracted for comparison in a–d. In each box plot, the centre line represents the median, the plus sign indicates the mean, the box edges delineate the first and third quartiles, the whiskers extend to the maximum and minimum values and the points show individual values. Different lower-case letters indicate statistical significance, as calculated via one-way ANOVA with a post-hoc Tukey HSD test (P < 0.05).
