## 3 Results
### Pot Experiment
#### 3.2.2 Sprout Length  
The boxplot in Figure 8 illustrates the distribution of sprout length across the three treatment groups. Both LDPE 1% and LDPE 5% treatments exhibit slightly higher median sprout lengths compared to the Control, indicating a potential positive influence of LDPE on early sprout development. However, the observed differences are relatively modest.  
Figure 7: Effect on germination percentage of _S. alba_ exposed to different LDPE MP concentrations in the pot experiment exposure after 10 days. Values are presented as mean \(\pm\) standard error (SE).  
The overall variability is comparable across treatments, although the LDPE 5% group shows slightly greater dispersion and a higher number of upper outliers, suggesting increased variability in response at this concentration.  
ANOVA indicated there is an overall statistically significant difference among group means, but it did not reveal where those differences occur. Therefore, [PERSON]'s test was applied as a post hoc analysis to perform all possible pairwise comparisons between treatments.  
The results presented in Table 2 indicate a marginally significant difference (\(p=0.0607\)) between the LDPE 5% treatment and the Control. Specifically, the sprout lengths from the LDPE 5% treatment were between 0.01 mm and 0.54 mm greater than those from the Control treatment. However, since the \(p\)-value is slightly above the conventional significance level of 0.05, this difference should be interpreted with caution.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Comparison** & **Estimate** & **Std. Error** & **t Value** & **\(p\) Value** \\ \hline LDPE 1\%–Control & 0.22712 & 0.11185 & 2.031 & 0.1068 \\ LDPE 5\%–Control & 0.26331 & 0.11561 & 2.278 & 0.0607 \\ LDPE 5\%–LDPE 1\% & 0.03619 & 0.11447 & 0.316 & 0.9464 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 2: [PERSON]’s test for differences in sprout length between treatments in the pot experiment.  
Figure 8: Boxplot illustration of the distribution of length (in mm) of sprouts from the pot experiment across three treatments: Control (C), LDPE 1%, and LDPE 5%. The central bold line within each box represents the median sprout length, while the box itself spans the interquartile range (25 th to 75 th percentile). Whiskers indicate the minimum and maximum values within 1.5 times the interquartile range. The dots represent outliers, where for each treatment, some individual measurements were much lower or higher than the majority of the data. A marginally significant difference was observed between LDPE 5% and Control (\(p=0.0607\)), while other comparisons were not significant (\(p>0.05\)).  
In contrast, the comparison between LDPE 1% and the Control shows an estimate of 0.22712 with a \(p\)-value of 0.1068, which is not statistically significant. Similarly, the comparison between LDPE 5% and LDPE 1% showed an estimate of 0.03619 with a \(p\)-value of 0.9464, indicating no significant difference in sprout length between these two treatments. Overall, the findings suggest that the LDPE 5% treatment may have a slight positive effect on sprout length compared to the Control, but the difference is marginally significant.