Fig. 2

a Boxplots of total sugar content between high- and low-sugar groups, distributed across average peak intensities of low (DP3–5), mid (DP10–12) and high (DP18–20) degree of polymerisation (DP) of fructans. Patterned and shaded boxes denote high- and low-sugar groups, respectively. Different upper case letter codes presented between the two groups, indicate significantly different (p < 0.05) values by Tukey’s HSD. b Correlation analysis (Pearson method) between low-, mid- and high-DP fructans within the 39 high-sugar genotypes. Positive correlations are displayed in blue and negative correlations in red colour. Colour intensity and the size of the circle are proportional to the correlation coefficients. Legend colour at the bottom shows the correlation coefficients and the corresponding colours. c Comparison of average peak intensities ± SE of high- (Patterned bars) and low-DP (shaded bars) fructans across the 39 high-sugar genotypes, along with respective linear regression trends. The high-sugar genotype Aberdart is marked as the current standard. Data underlying the plots in c are available in Supplementary Data 3