Fig. 7

Effects of knocking out and overexpression of gma-MiR398c composite soybean plants on drought resistance. a Performance of soybean with K599, OE-miR398c, KO-1 and KO-2 transgenic roots after drought stress. b Enlargement of the leaves from the soybean plants. c Relative electrolyte leakage in leaves from the soybean with transgenic hairy roots compared to the normal K599. (d) O₂^.− production rate in plant leaves. Control K599 represents hairy roots transformed with the empty vector; OE indicates transgenic hairy roots overexpressing gma-MIR398c; KO indicates transgenic hairy roots harboring the pCas9-U6-sgRNAs plasmid. Data are means of ten biological replicates ± SD (10 plants per replicate). Asterisks indicate significant difference applying Student’s t test (*, P < 0.05; **, P < 0.01; ***, P < 0.001)