FIGURE 2.

Variation in sorghum root microbiome communities by root age. (A) Box-and-whiskers plot of Shannon’s diversity of bulk soil, rhizosphere, and root endophyte communities separated by root age. SubDivision (x-axis) indicates whether samples came from whole root systems (AllRoot; the bulk of roots remaining after six individual roots were collected), individual roots (SingleRoot), or subsectioned roots (SubRootTop is closest to the plant and SubRootBottom is the root tip). Letters indicate significantly different groups (p < 0.05, Tukey’s test). (B) Relative abundance of the top 9 most abundant bacterial classes in the root endosphere separated by water treatment. (C) PCoA plot of root samples based on Bray-Curtis dissimilarity, colored by root age where open circles are well-watered control roots and triangles are drought-stressed roots.