Fig. 4

Dominant chimeric repressor-mediated suppression of ONAC095 function conferred an improved drought tolerance in ONAC095-SRDX plants. a Growth performance of ONAC095-OE, ONAC095-SRDX and WT plants at different stages during a drought stress experiment. ONAC095-OE and ONAC095-SRDX plants were grown in same barrels with WT and were subjected to drought stress treatment by withholding water for 20 days. Drought stressed plants were recovered for another 7 days by normally watering. b–e Comparison of survival rate, water loss rate, contents of proline and soluble sugars between ONAC095-SRDX and WT plants with or without drought stress treatment. Plants with >20 % green leaves were considered to be survivals (b). Rates of water loss in detached leaves of 4-week-old ONAC095-SRDX and WT plants were measured at indicated time points over a period of 5 hr after detachment (c). Leaf samples form 4-week-old ONAC095-SRDX and WT plants grown under normally watered and drought-stressed (at 6 days after water withholding) conditions were collected and measured for contents of proline (d) and soluble sugars (e). f Expression of drought stress-related genes in ONAC095-SRDX and WT plants before and after drought stress treatment. Leaf samples were collected from normally watered and drought stressed plants for 15 days. Relative expression levels were normalized by the transcript level of the Actin gene as an internal control and the expression level of each gene of interest in WT plants under normal condition was set as 1. Nor., normally watered condition; Dro., drought stressed condition. Data presented in (b–f) are the means ± SD from three independent experiments and columns with an asterisk indicate significant difference at p < 0.05 level between WT and SRDX lines. WT, wild type; OE6, ONAC095-OE6; OE12, ONAC095-OE12; S2, ONAC095-SRDX2; S3, ONAC095-SRDX3