2. Materials and methods
2.1. Plant material, growth conditions and experimental design
The soybean seeds (Glycine max L. cultivar Yunhe) were kindly
supplied by Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences; they were
washed and soaked in distilled water for 8 h prior to being placed
in a sprouter for germination. The germination temperature was
30 C.
The different treatments in the incubators were as follows:
(1) CK: the germination was conducted in a dark chamber. The
soybean sprouts were sprayed with distilled water three
times daily (at 8:00, 16:00 and 24:00 h).
(2) cPTIO (NO inhibitor): the germination was conducted
according to (1). The soybean sprouts were sprayed with
0.5 mM cPTIO three times daily.