3.2 Effects of populations and population pairs on early-season WR growth and development based on two-way ANOVA
Analytical results showed that population (WRE or WRL) had significant (p <0.05) effects on vegetative growth traits, including plant height, number of tillers per plant and leaf length/width, and reproductive growth traits, including flowering time and reproductive traits in the early rice-cultivation season (Table 1). However, no significant effects of population were detected in the late rice-cultivation season (Table S4). These results indicated possible significant differences in these vegetative and reproductive growth traits between the early- and late-season WR populations in the early rice-cultivation season. In addition, population pair (CDE/L, HJE/L and DCE/L) also showed significant effects on some of traits at different stages in both the early and late rice-cultivation season (Table 1, Table S4). Noticeably, a pronounced effect of population pair in the early season was detected, for example, the extremely significant effects (p <0.001) on flowering time and reproductive traits (Table 1). These results showed some variations of the phenotypic differences estimated between the early- and late-season WR populations among different population pairs, and suggested that the micro-environments in different rice fields also played some roles in weedy rice growth and development.
In addition, transplant season (ES and LS) also had profound effects on almost all of growth and development traits in both the early- and late-season weedy rice populations (Table S5; Table S6). This result suggested that differences in ecological elements, such as temperature and daylength, between ES and LS may directly contribute to the different growth and development status of weedy rice, although in the same rice field.