The photosynthetic capacity of the seedlings was determined every 5 days at 9.00 a.m. during the study period using a CIRAS-3 portable photosynthesis system (PP Systems, USA), according to Jia et al. [32 (link)]. Ten individually mature and fully expanded leaves were measured for each treatment. The chlorophyll fluorescence was detected before and after the treatments according to Jia et al. [31 (link)], using an Open FluorCam FC 800-O imaging fluorometer (Photon Systems Instruments), and analyzed with Fluorcam7 software (PSI, Brno, Czech Republic).
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