Specialized 16SrX phytoplasmas induce diverse morphological and physiological changes in their respective fruit crops
Fig 2
Analysis of morphological leaf parameters in uninfected and phytoplasma infected apple trees.
(A) The infection of apple trees with a virulent classified ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma mali’ accession (3/6) was investigated with the morphology of the leaf main vein in the midrib. (B) The morphological analysis consisted of the vascular bundle area, the xylem area, the phloem area, the sieve element area, the xylem/phloem ratio and the sieve element/phloem ratio and showed a significant decrease for nearly all studied parameters in AP infected trees but not for the sieve element/phloem ratio. Box-whisker plots with median as lines and jittered raw values as closed circles (corresponding to each measurement). Boxes represent the interquartile range (IQR) and whiskers extend to 1.5*IQR. Bars represent the 95% confidence intervals with the estimated marginal means obtained from mixed effect models as dots (both back transformed to the response scale). Letters indicate statistical differences between EMMs of groups at the 0.05 significance level.