Fig. 2

Lognormal distributions of nuclear areas in uninoculated and mycorrhizal roots of wild-type M. truncatula. The distribution curves of nuclear size, obtained through permutation analysis of areas detected by Manual method (a) showed significantly higher values of skewness (P < 0.001) and kurtosis (P < 0.01) in mycorrhizal (light grey) compared to uninoculated (dark grey) root segments. No statistically significant difference was observed between the distribution curves of nuclear areas estimated with TrackMate plugin (b). In analogy to the manual method, distribution curves of nuclear size detected by Round Surface plugin (c), showed significantly higher values of skewness (P < 0.001) and kurtosis (P < 0.01) in mycorrhizal compared to uninoculated root segments. Pairwise comparisons were performed with Tukey’s post-hoc test