Expression profiles of ONAC096. (a–c) ONAC096 transcript levels were measured in the leaves of wild-type (WT) plants grown in the field under natural long-day (NLD) conditions (≥14 h light per day) (a,c) or in detached leaves of WT plants grown in a growth chamber for 3 weeks under long-day (LD) conditions (14 h light/10 h dark) (b). (a) ONAC096 is strongly expressed in WT flag leaves after heading. The red arrow indicates the heading date (130 days after seeding (DAS)). (b) ONAC096 expression gradually increases in detached leaves of 4-week-old WT plants in which senescence was induced in complete darkness in 3 mM MES buffer (pH 5.8) at 28 °C. (c) ONAC096 transcript levels in senescing WT flag leaves that were divided into three regions at the ripening stage (158 DAS). B, bottom; M, middle; T, tip. (d) ONAC096 is differentially expressed in WT tissues separated from the tiller base (TB) at the tillering stage (88 DAS) in root (R), culm (C), leaf blade (LB), leaf sheath (LS), and panicle (P) tissue at the heading stage (130 DAS). ONAC096 transcript levels were determined by RT-qPCR and normalized to that of OsUBQ5. Relative expression was calculated using the ΔΔCT method. Mean and standard deviations were obtained from five (a,c,d) and three biological repeats (b). The experiment was repeated twice with similar results.