About the Authors

Ning Yang

Contributed equally to this work with: Ning Yang, Yanli Lu

Affiliation National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China

Yanli Lu

Contributed equally to this work with: Ning Yang, Yanli Lu

Affiliations National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China, Maize Research Institute, Sichuan Agricultural University, Wenjiang, Sichuan, China

Xiaohong Yang

Affiliation National Maize Improvement Center of China, Beijing Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

Juan Huang

Affiliation National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China

Yang Zhou

Affiliation National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China

Farhan Ali

Affiliation National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China

Weiwei Wen

Affiliation National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China

Jie Liu

Affiliation National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China

Jiansheng Li

Affiliation National Maize Improvement Center of China, Beijing Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

Jianbing Yan

yjianbing@mail.hzau.edu.cn

Affiliation National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: JY. Performed the experiments: JH YZ. Analyzed the data: NY YL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: NY XY JLiu FA. Wrote the paper: YL NY JH FA JY. Contributed new protocols: WW JLi.