About the Authors

Ze-Zhi Zhang

‡ These authors are joint first authors on this work.

Affiliations College of Horticulture and Gardening, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, Hubei, People’s Republic of China, Institute of Root Biology, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, Hubei, People’s Republic of China

You-Gen Lou

‡ These authors are joint first authors on this work.

Affiliation School of Foreign Studies, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, Hubei, People’s Republic of China

Dao-Juan Deng

Affiliation College of Horticulture and Gardening, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, Hubei, People’s Republic of China

Mohammed Mahabubur Rahman

Affiliation Brix N’ Berries, Leduc, Alberta, Canada

Qiang-Sheng Wu

wuqiangsh@163.com

Affiliations College of Horticulture and Gardening, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, Hubei, People’s Republic of China, Institute of Root Biology, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, Hubei, People’s Republic of China

Competing Interests

The authors have the following interests: Co-author MM Rahman is employed by Brix N’ Berries. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter their adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: QSW ZZZ. Performed the experiments: ZZZ DJD. Analyzed the data: QSW MMR YGL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: ZZZ QSW. Wrote the paper: YGL ZZZ QSW MMR.