Plant phenotype of <i>L. perenne</i> infected with <i>E. festucae</i> WT and <i>gpiB, sspM, sspN</i> and <i>sspO</i> deletion mutant strains.

(A-D) Whole plant phenotype of WT and deletion mutant-infected L. perenne plants 8 weeks post-planting. (E and F) Box plots representing tiller number (E) and length (F) of ryegrass plants 8 weeks post-planting infected with E. festucae WT (n = 6) and ΔgpiB (n = 9/9/5), ΔsspM (n = 10/15/13), ΔsspN (n = 13/8/8) and ΔsspO (n = 7/8/9) mutant strains. One-way ANOVAs were used to test for differences in both plant phenotypes between wildtype and modified strains. In each case the ANOVA was fitted with R and a Bonferroni correction was applied to all p-values to account for multiple testing.