Fig. 4.

The involvement of ABA signaling in rice seed longevity. (A) A schematic overview of the ABA signaling pathway alongside DE gene expression during seed aging. ns, no significant difference. *FDR < 0.05; **FDR < 0.01; ***FDR < 0.001 (likelihood ratio test by DEseq2 program). The transcripts showing significant difference in abundance at FDR < 0.01 were considered to be DE. The transcripts DE in both varieties were colored in red. Expression was scaled across all the samples of Kasalath and Jigeng88 (z-score). SnRK2, SUCROSE NONFERMENTING-RELATED PROTEIN KINASE 2. (B and C) The effect of ABA treatment on the expression of bZIP23 and PER1A, respectively, in WT and bzip23 mutant. The seeds were imbibed in water and 5 μM ABA for 0, 24, and 48 h, and the embryos were excised for qRT-PCR analysis of bZIP23 and PER1A expression. Different letters above the boxes indicate a significant difference (P < 0.05, Welch’s ANOVA) among different time points of a given treatment. (D) The change of ABA content during seed aging. The box plots show medians with interquartile (n = 9). ns, no significant difference. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001 (Welch’s ANOVA test). (E and F) The effect of ABA treatment on the expression of bZIP23 and PER1A, respectively, in Kasalath and Jigeng88 seeds. The seeds were treated with 0, 2.5, and 5 μM ABA for 24 h, and then the embryo was excised for RNA extraction and qPCR analysis. Significant differences were determined as in B. The error bars in B, C, E, and F indicate ± SE (n = 3).