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Zhang Daqian (1899-1983) is an extremely influential painter in the history of modern Chinese painting. Among his works, the lotus paintings hold a special place in Zhang Daqian’s artistic career. This paper conducts a comparative study of Zhang Daqian’s early and late lotus paintings through quantitative analysis on three levels. Firstly, from the perspective of ink color, a quantitative comparative analysis concludes that the early works are characterized by high brightness, low contrast, and negative skewness. This indicates that the paintings possess a soft, delicate, and bright visual effect, giving a fresh and tranquil feeling. In contrast, the late works are characterized by low brightness, high contrast, and zero skewness, presenting a strong contrast, vivid colors, and visual balance. The color distribution in the late paintings is relatively balanced, forming a stark contrast to the soft style of the early works. Secondly, from the level of visual complexity, it is concluded that the early works have unique texture characteristics, while the late works are more uniform, consistent, and regular in these aspects, with stronger color contrast and dynamics, and more boldness. Finally, by extracting specific elements of “flowers, stems, leaves” for texture strokes and ink color gradation analysis, applying data quantification-based feature extraction and capturing important data information in MATLAB for data comparison, combined with professional analysis and research on related indicators of the artwork, the comparative results of quantitative analysis of Zhang Daqian’s early and late lotus paintings are given, summarizing the quantitative analysis results in descriptive language. The experimental results show that the algorithm has good performance, providing a solid basis for the quantitative analysis and comparative study of Zhang Daqian’s lotus paintings from early and late periods, and objectively presenting the style changes from “following the ancient” to “transforming the ancient” in Zhang Daqian’s lotus paintings through data.

Sclerotinia sclerotiorum is a devastating necrotrophic fungal pathogen and has a substantial economic impact on crop production worldwide. Magnaporthe appressoria-specific (MAS) proteins have been suggested to be involved in the appressorium formation in Magnaporthe oryzae. Sscnd1, an MAS homolog gene, is highly induced at the early infection stage of S. sclerotiorum. Knock-down the expression of Sscnd1 gene severely reduced the virulence of S. sclerotiorum on intact rapeseed leaves, and their virulence was partially restored on wounded leaves. The Sscnd1 gene-silenced strains exhibited a defect in compound appressorium formation and cell integrity. The instantaneous silencing of Sscnd1 by tobacco rattle virus (TRV)-mediated host-induced gene silencing (HIGS) resulted in a significant reduction in disease development in tobacco. Three transgenic HIGS Arabidopsis lines displayed high levels of resistance to S. sclerotiorum and decreased Sscnd1 expression. Production of specific Sscnd1 siRNA in transgenic HIGS Arabidopsis lines was confirmed by stem-loop qRT-PCR. This study revealed that the compound appressorium-related gene Sscnd1 is required for cell integrity and full virulence in S. sclerotiorum and that Sclerotinia stem rot can be controlled by expressing the silencing constructs of Sscnd1 in host plants.