Table 1 Survival rate, Dry shoot biomass, Dry root biomass, Shoot soluble sugar, Shoot Pro of Dongdao-4 and Jigeng-88 plants before, after exposure to medium supplemented with mannitol and recovery from the mannitol treatment. Three-week-old seedlings were transferred to solution containing 40 mM mannitol for 1 day, and 80 mM mannitol for 1 day, and then exposed to 120 mM mannitol for 5 days, finally recovered for 15 days. Data are means ±SE (n ≥ 4). Means with different letters are significantly different (P < 0.05) within the same treatments. Asterisks (*) indicate significant differences between control and treatments of the same genotype which were determined by Student’s t-test (*0.01 < P < 0.05, **0.001 < P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001)

100 ± 0.00

100 ± 0.00

100 ± 0.00^***a

113.12 ± 4.47

100.68 ± 3.49

132.18 ± 7.68 ^**a

83.53 ± 2.99 ^*b

526.08 ± 18.83 ^***a

175.03 ± 13.82 ^*b

12.81 ± 0.12

12.5 ± 0.62

19.95 ± 0.88^**a

12.73 ± 0.35^b

66.23 ± 3.85^***a

16.48 ± 0.66^b

1.79 ± 0.11

1.94 ± 0.43

16.61 ± 0.73^***a

0.67 ± 0.06

0.75 ± 0.06

1.32 ± 0.14^**a