(no salt, no bacteria) served as control (1st bar). For the test strains, strains were grown and diluted with 0.03 M MgSO4 to achieve an OD of 0.25 _ 0.02 at 600 nm. Surface sterilized seeds were
inoculated with the test strains (1 h incubation at room temperature) and sown in pots manually. Salt treatment was started at 3rd week of seed sowing. A group of 24 pots (96 plants) was set for each treatment, and the entire experiment was repeated two times. A two-way ANOVA was performed. Significant differences between groups were analyzed by Tukey’s post-test for each test strain and compared with controls. For each bar, the values represented by the same lower-case letter are not significantly different at P < 0.05. All the measurements were taken following 11 weeks of growth. Error bars indicate 1 standard error of the mean.