3.3. Plant growth and fungal treatment differences
We interpreted the first latent variable (1st LDA; Table 1) as col- onization success. The largest contributor to it is the degree of fun- gal colonization of roots (for 12 root sections per plant, this is the count of those successfully colonized), with a smaller contribution from stem length and the number of roots sampled. We inter- preted the second latent variable (2nd LDA; Table 1) as plant growth. The largest contributor to this variable is stem length, fol- lowed by root length and root weight, with a negative contribution from leaf chlorophyll content.
The results of multiple mean comparisons of the fungal treat- ments are shown in Table 2.
The upper right triangle gives p values for comparisons for the first dependent latent variable (LDA1) and the lower left gives p values for comparisons on the second dependent latent variable (LDA2). Nine contrasts on colonization success (Fig. 3, top panel) were significant with Micosis! WP and control (similar to each other) vs Beauveri- plant! WP, Metarhiplant! WP, CIAT 014A, and CIAT 053 (latter four similar to each other). Five contrasts on plant growth (Fig. 3, bottom panel) were significant with BioMa! vs CIAT 359, Beauveriplant! WP and Micosis (latter three similar to each other), and CIAT 359 vs CIAT 001 and CIAT 014A (latter two similar to each other). Metarhi- plant! WP vs BioMa! was not significant (p = 0.0503).