Table 1.

Physiological and morphological responses of the two genotypes after 10 days of moisture stress. Physiological and morphological drought-stress-related traits, measured on three plants per replication for each treatment (stressed and control) after 10 days of water stress (just before leaf sample collection for qRT-PCR). All values shown are mean values at P ≤ 0.05. ns, not significant; **significant at P ≤ 0.05; SBG, significance between genotypes (columns); significance between treatments is shown in the rows.

Cultivar	Conductance (mmol m−2 s−1)		Leaf retention (%)		Relative water content (%)		Number of leaves		Plant height (cm) ns
	Control	Stressed	Control	Stressed	Control	Stressed	Control	Stressed	Control	Stressed
MH96/0686	350.0 ± 37.21	168.9 ± 200**	76.88 ± 3.65	76.33 ± 2.33ns	97.3 ± 1.12	95.4 ± 2.92ns	26.78 ± 1.27	24.89 ± 1.50 ns	52.22 ± 2.86	52.11 ± 2.64 ns
Nyalanda	492.5 ± 43.0	355 ± 21.2**	63.33 ± 4.22	51.25 ± 2.48**	94.95 ± 1.37	81.3 ± 2.92ns	21.50 ± 1.56	13.37 ± 1.59**	48.67 ± 3.51	47.50 ± 2.80 ns
SBG	**	**	**	**	ns	**	**	**	ns	ns