Water stress induced significant differences in leaf growth traits.
Function 1 was fitted to the leaf dry matter obtaining high correlation
coefficients (0.99, 0.97, 0.90) (Fig. 3A). The highest maximum
leaf weight was obtained with W100 treatment (16.9 g plant−1)
and the lowest with W30 (5.2 g plant−1). While the rate of increase
in leaf weight was not affected by water stress, the ILGR values
were significantly higher in W100 (0.163 g g−1 day−1) compared to
the water-stressed treatments (Table 2). Also LWC was higher in
W100 and decreased slower than in the W50 and W30 treatments
(Fig. 3B).
FLV at the early growth stages was about 90% in all treatments
(Fig. 4), but in W100 plants the fraction allocated to the leaves