Table 4.

Licorice seedling performance under combined effects of allelochemical addition and rhizobacterial inoculants

Treatment	Inoculation	Chlorophyll content (SPAD)	Shoot fresh weight (g)	Root fresh weight (g)
-	I	29.98 ± 1.11 d	0.05 ± 0.003 f	0.02 ± 0.002 b
A	C	32.56 ± 1.494 c	0.24 ± 0.037 d	0.04 ± 0.004 b
	N	36.51 ± 1.742 ab	0.33 ± 0.042 c	0.13 ± 0.013 ab
	E	34.29 ± 2.157 bc	0.25 ± 0.032 d	0.05 ± 0.005 b
	S	36.41 ± 1.507 ab	0.26 ± 0.028 d	0.07 ± 0.007 ab
W	C	35.4 ± 2.403 ab	0.33 ± 0.032 c	0.07 ± 0.003 ab
	N	37.27 ± 0.935 a	0.65 ± 0.071 b	0.13 ± 0.012 ab
	E	37.59 ± 1.391 a	0.82 ± 0.05 a	0.18 ± 0.008 a
	S	36.94 ± 1.517 a	0.34 ± 0.031 c	0.12 ± 0.238 ab
Group	F_values	21.28	288.04	3.94
	P_values	< 0.001	< 0.001	< 0.001

Values within the same column followed by different letters indicate significant differences (P < 0.05; one-way ANOVA, Tukey’s HSD test). Bold P-values indicate significant differences (P < 0.05)

A allelochemical treatment, W water treatment, I initial sampling stage, C control: no inoculants, N Novosphingobium resinovorum inoculants, E Ensifer sesbaniae inoculants, S synthetic inoculants