Table 6.

Correlations among protein traits, soil available N, N assimilation and characterization of protein accumulation.

Quality traits	Soil available N		GS activity	NADH-GOGAT activity	Free amino acid content	Duration	Peak rate
	0–20 cm	20–40 cm
TAA	0.805**	0.708**	0.552*	0.173ns	-0.621*	-0.049ns	0.702**
E	0.772**	0.737**	0.471ns	0.092ns	-0.614*	-0.130ns	0.690**
SE	0.823**	0.736**	0.509*	0.131ns	-0.434 ns	-0.152ns	0.601*
Glu	0.703**	0.639**	0.503*	0.156ns	-0.647**	-0.062ns	0.718**
Lys	0.572*	0.508*	0.516*	0.123ns	-0.618*	0.013ns	0.623*
Met	0.634**	0.528*	0.493ns	0.125ns	-0.575*	-0.108ns	0.752**

TAA, E, and SE stand for total, essential and semi-essential proteinogenic amino acids, respectively. Glu, Lys, and Met stand for glutamic acid, lysine, and methionine, respectively. Soil available N represents the sum of the and levels. The duration and peak rate of protein accumulation were calculated from sigmoid growth curves (see Materials and Methods). ^∗ and ^∗∗ denote significant at the 0.05 level and 0.01 level, respectively.