Fig. 4.

gh3oct plants are tolerant to water deficit. (a) Root growth ratio of Arabidopsis thaliana Col‐0 and gh3oct seedlings in media with lowered water potential. Four‐day‐old seedlings were transferred to plates perfused with a solution of PEG8000 at the indicated concentration and grown for another 6 d. To calculate the ratio, the root length from seedlings in polyethylene glycol (PEG)‐containing plates was divided by the mean root length of seedlings grown on control plates (perfused with liquid MS). Asterisks indicate statistically significantly different growth ratios from Col‐0 in a two‐tailed Student's t‐test (***, P < 0.001; n ≥ 25). (b) Tolerance of Col‐0 and gh3oct plants to drought stress on soil. The image corresponds to 3‐wk‐old plants on dry soil. Survival rate after rewatering is indicated at the bottom and represents the mean percentage from three independent experiments with 27, 36 and 23 plants per genotype. (c) Soil pot weight in the drought experiment. Pots were prepared with 40 g of soil mixture, watered and weighed at the beginning of the experiment (initial). Pots were reweighed when the soil was noticeably dry and before plants started showing drought symptoms (before drought). No significant differences were found between Col‐0 and gh3oct pots in a two‐tailed Student's t‐test. Box plots (a, c) showing the individual data points, the first and third quartiles (bottom and top of the box), the median (line in the box), and the highest (top whisker) and lowest (bottom whisker) values.