Fig. 4

No or moderate impact of the Dex-treatment on ovule development and fertility. a The developmental progression of ovules following treatment was monitored by scoring ovule stages in flowers at stage 9/10 sampled at 5 dpi and flowers stage 12 sampled at 9 dpi following the nomenclature in [22, 42], n = number of ovules, P value: return from a Chi-square test (3 × 3 contingency table), ns: not significant. b The functionality of an induced construct was assessed by monitoring the eviction of H1.1-RFP during SMC differentiation as described [25]. stage 1-II ovule primordia (flower stage 9 sampled at 5 dpi) were scored for the absence, presence or residual presence of H1.1-RFP in the SMC (white, pale and dark grey, respectively); #1–3: three independent RPS5a >  > H1.1-RFP lines, C, control line (H1.1::H1.1-RFP). c Seed set per silique produced from flowers treated individually with Dex, Mock or water as indicated and using different solvents for the Dex solution (see text). The plot represents the outcome of two experiments (white and grey background, see text). Boxplot: Each dot (circle) indicates the % of normal seeds in one silique; Center lines show the medians; box limits indicate the 25th and 75th percentiles as determined by R software; the number of seeds, siliques and plants used for each experiment is indicated in the table below the plot. *P < 0.05 (Mann Whitney U test), ns not significant. See Additional file 1 for source data