Moisture-responsive root-branching pathways identified in diverse maize breeding germplasm

Plants grow complex root systems to extract unevenly distributed resources from soils. Spatial differences in soil moisture are perceived by root tips leading to the patterning of new root branches towards available water, a process called hydropatterning. Little is known about hydropatterning behavior and its genetic basis in crops plants. Here, we develop an assay to measure hydropatterning in maize and reveal substantial differences between tropical/subtropical and temperate maize breeding germplasm that likely resulted from divergent selection. Genetic dissection of hydropatterning confirmed the regulatory role of auxin and revealed that the gaseous hormone ethylene locally inhibits root branching from air-exposed tissues. Our results demonstrate how distinct signaling pathways translate spatial patterns of water availability to developmental programs that determine root architecture., All methods can be found in the supplementary materials of the related publication., , # Moisture-responsive root-branching pathways identified in diverse maize breeding germplasm

The data we submitted was collected for a project with the aim to characterize hydropatterning and elucidate genetic control of hydropatterning in maize (*Zea mays*). Validation of maize candidate genes for hydropatterning was carried out in Arabidopsis (*Arabidopsis thaliana*) using mutants of gene orthologs.

We included the following:

(1) Laser cutter files to re-create acrylic pieces needed to construct the hydropatterning assay for maize (LaserCutterFiles.zip).
(2) Raw data from the maize portion of the project (MaizeHydropatterning.zip). The folder contains all data needed to execute the related R scripts.
(3) Raw data from the Arabidopsis portion of the project (ArabidopsisHydropatterning.zip). The folder contains all data needed to execute the related R scripts.
(4) A copy of the supplementary data of the manuscript (Supplementary_data_S1_to_S16.xlsx).
(5) Scripts to run the Genome and...