Aboveground plant parts were detached from belowground parts using sterilized equipment and placed individually into preweighed 1.5 mL tubes. After determining the plant weight, 1 mL PBS with 0.02% Silwet L‐77 (Helena Chemical Company) was added to each tube. Bacteria were dislodged from the sample by shaking twice at 2.6 m s−1 for 5 min (Omni Bead Ruptor 24) and sonicated for 5 min. Bacterial CFU were enumerated using plate counting on R2A media plates.
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