The expression levels of several defense pathway genes also were examined over the time course following A. flavus inoculation. The ZmPR-1 gene displayed a significant similar suppression in expression at early time points in the wounded and inoculated treatments compared to the non-treated control from 0 to 4 DAI in B73 (Fig. 2A), suggesting the observed suppression in ZmPR-1 expression was due to wounding rather than A. flavus inoculation. ZmPR-1 expression in the wounded and inoculated treatments was not significantly different from the non-treated control in B73 from 6 to 14 DAI. In contrast, ZmPR-1 expression levels in TZAR101 (Fig. 2B) did not change significantly in response to any treatment at all time-points except at 14 DAI where there was a marginally significant increase in expression in inoculated samples compared to wounding or the non-treated control. The contrasting patterns of ZmPR-1 expression between B73 and TZAR101 indicated a significant difference in the responses of the two lines to wounding (p ¼ 0.0155; Table S8).