Relative water content and relative electrical conductance assay
For leaf RWC measurement, the leaves were quickly removed from the plant and weighed to record leaf fresh weight (FW). The leaves were then incubated in distilled water for 24 h and weighed to obtain the leaf turgid weight (TW). The leaves were dried to constant weight in a 65 °C oven and the dry weight (DW) was recorded. The leaf RWC was calculated as (FW − DW)/ (TW − DW) ×100 (Wang et al. , 2016).
For determination of leaf REC, the leaves were detached at 0 and 7 days under drought stress and REC was measured as previously described with a DDS-307 Conductivity Meter (Leici, Shanghai, China) (Shi et al. , 2013).