Figure 1. Physiological analysis of the control, partial girdled (PG) and fully girdled (FG) leaves.

(A) An IKI stain showing starch accumulation in control, PG and FG cassava leaf lobes. Leaves were collected from 120- and 45-day-old plants at 0, 2, and 4 h after the lights came on, cleared of photosynthetic pigments, and stained with IKI. (B) Starch and sucrose measurements for control, PG and FG leaves. All leaves were harvested and processed concurrently. Letters above the standard error bars indicate whether the treatment had a significant influence within leaves from plants of a given age (P < 0.05) based on analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Tukey's honestly significant difference (HSD) test. (C) A/Ci curve. Pn (A) vs intercellular CO₂ concentration (Ci; μmolmol⁻¹). Measurements were performed at an average ambient relative humidity of 46.6 ± 3.4% and an irradiance of 1200 μmol m⁻²s⁻¹.