Fig. 4

Effects of GhACS2 and GhACS6 overexpression on cotton plants infected with V. dahliae in a Verticillium disease nursery under open-field conditions. A–C Disease symptoms of shoots (A, bar = 20 cm) and browning of stem vascular tissues (B, bar = 2.5 cm), as well as the disease indexes (C) of YZ1, GhACS2-OE and GhACS6-OE plants growing in the disease nursery. D Relative V. dahliae biomasses in stems of YZ1, GhACS2-OE and GhACS6-OE plants growing in the disease nursery. Data were obtained using qRT-PCR, and cotton GhUBQ7 was used as the internal control to normalize all the data. Experiments were repeated three times with similar results. Values are means ± SDs (Student’s t-test; *P < 0.05)