2. Materials and methods
2.1. Plant material
The experiments were conducted on two species: M. sinensis and M. x giganteus. M. sinensis was represented by four genotypes: 93 M0146010 (Ms10), 93 M0146026 (Ms11), 93 M0006004 (Ms16), and 92 M0088 (Ms19). M. x giganteus was represented by MG1.
The M. sinensis genotypes have different origins: genotypes Ms10 and Ms11 are European hybrids, Ms16 originates from Japan, and Ms19 is a selected German form named ‘Goliath’. All of the M.sinensis genotypes that we chose were diploids, with the exception
of the Ms19 genotype, which is a triploid artificial sterile hybrid (Jørgensen and Muhs, 2001). All plant material was grown in soil under unheated greenhouse conditions.