Again- an improper drought stress protocol for testing transgenic plants

In their report in Planta (2009) 229:605–615 (Free access-- http://www.ricedata.cn/reference/pdfiles/0082v229i3p605.pdf ) Guojun Lu,Chenxi Gao, Xingnan Zheng and Bin Han test their rice plants for drought resistance by subjecting them to 9.5 hours in PEG 20% solution (see Fig.6). It can be suspected that the protocol of 9.5 hours in PEG has been adopted from some practice used with cell cultures. PEG might be appropriate or not for stressing rice plants (see our Methods page), but a 9.5 hour stress period is un-natural and irrelevant. It does not allow plants to express their full capacity for adaptation. At least a period of one week until stress symptoms appear is more reasonable.