Fig. 5

Virulence assessments of the wild-type (WT) strain PXO99^A and sRNA deletion mutants by inoculation and mock-inoculation experiments performed on the susceptible rice variety. a Bacterial blight symptoms on Nipponbare leaves photographed at day 14 after leaf-top-clipping inoculations. b Blight lesion length on leaves from (a). c Bacterial populations in Nipponbare leaves 3 days after leaf-center infiltrating inoculations. Data shown are means values ± SD bars [n = 10 leaves in (b); n = 3 experimental replicates in (c)]. Different letters in small case indicate significant differences by analysis of variation using Fisher’s least significant difference test (P < 0.01)