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Author notes

1. Arun M. Channapur and Santosh Kumar are the authors contributed equally and share first authorship.

Authors and Affiliations

1. ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Jharkhand, 825405, India

   Arun M. Channapur, Santosh Kumar, Preeti Singh, Akash Anandrao, Saheb Pal, Yamini Thakur, Archana Hulisara Ramesh & Vishal Nath

2. ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Assam, 787034, India

   Krishnan P. Abhijith

3. ICAR-Indian Institute of Maize Research, Ludhiana, 141003, India

   Bhupender Kumar

4. ICAR-Research Complex for North Eastern Hilly Region, Meghalaya, 793103, India

   Sandeep Jaiswal

5. ICAR-Indian Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology, Ranchi, 834003, India

   Omkar M. Limbalkar

6. ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, 110012, India

   Ganpati Mukri

Contributions

S.K., A.M.C.: Contributed equally; S.K. conceived and designed the study, supervised the research and drafted the manuscript. A.M.C, S.K., P.S. and A.A.: Performed the experiments, carried out root imaging, and collected the data. A.K.P.: Conducted the statistical and data analyses. B.K.: Managed germplasm maintenance. O.M.L., S.P., Y.T., G.M., A.H.R. and V.N. assisted with germplasm handling, drafting and critical revision of the manuscript. All authors discussed the results, contributed to manuscript preparation, and approved the final version.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Santosh Kumar, Bhupender Kumar or Preeti Singh.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.The author(s) declare no competing interests.

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