FIGURE 1.

Combined weight of parent and auxiliary apple shoots (left panel) and the auxiliary shoot propagation coefficient (middle panel). Apple shoots were inoculated with 3 μL of each strain suspended at ∼10⁷ cfu/ml in Murashige-Skoog medium. After 3 weeks of co-cultivation, the combined weight of parent and auxiliary shoots and the propagation coefficient represented by an average number of auxiliary shoots that developed on the parent shoot were assessed. A dashed line indicates the mean value of the control shoots. The insert on the right shows a representative sample of auxiliary shoots derived from one parent shoot. Data are presented as mean and SEM of a total of 40–55 shoots from three independent experiments. Means followed by the same letter are not significantly different (p < 0.05).