Fig. 1

Identification of the metabolites. a Classes of the metabolites with annotated structures. b PCA of the 385 maize inbred lines based on the metabolites identified under WW and DS conditions. The inbred lines grown under WW and DS conditions are indicated as blue and red dots, respectively. c Volcano plot showing the downregulated (green dots) and upregulated (yellow dots) metabolites under DS conditions compared to those under WW conditions. d Proportions of the up- (yellow), downregulated (green), and non-affected (gray) metabolites with known structures. e Comparison of the prediction accuracies of dry masses, fresh weights and survival rates by all, drought-responsive, and randomly selected metabolites in the maize population after drought stress via the rrBLUP approach. Statistical significance was determined by a bootstrap significance approach (see “Materials and methods”)