About the Authors

Aihua Liu

Contributed equally to this work with: Aihua Liu, Feng Gao

Affiliation Department of Plant Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Feng Gao

Contributed equally to this work with: Aihua Liu, Feng Gao

Affiliation Department of Plant Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Yuri Kanno

Affiliation RIKEN Plant Science Center, Tsurumi, Yokohama, Japan

Mark C. Jordan

Affiliation Cereal Research Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Yuji Kamiya

Affiliation RIKEN Plant Science Center, Tsurumi, Yokohama, Japan

Mitsunori Seo

Affiliation RIKEN Plant Science Center, Tsurumi, Yokohama, Japan

Belay T. Ayele

b_ayele@umanitoba.ca

Affiliation Department of Plant Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Assisted in the design of the study: MCJ. Conceived and designed the experiments: BTA. Performed the experiments: AL FG Y. Kanno BTA. Analyzed the data: AL FG Y. Kanno MS BTA. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MCJ Y. Kamiya MS. Wrote the paper: AL FG BTA.