The expression levels of the ZmERF1 gene displayed a decreasing trend developmentally in the non-treated controls from 0 to 10 DAI in B73 followed by an increase in expression at 14 DAI to initial levels (Fig. 2E). Neither wounding nor inoculation significantly affected its expression, except at 3 DAI when a suppression of ZmERF1 expression by inoculation was observed. ZmERF1 expression levels in TZAR101, in contrast, remained consistent for the duration of the time course with a slight elevation in expression in response to inoculation at 14 DAI compared to the wounding (Fig. 2F). Despite the observed different patterns of ZmERF1 expression between the two lines, no significant difference was detected in the overall expression levels between the two lines (p ¼ 0.1522), though there were significant line ? treatment (p ¼ 0.0017) and line ? DAI (p ¼ 0.0410) interactions (Table S10).