## 3 Results and Discussion  
### Effect of EM and OMW Treatments on Plants Growth  
In the present study, we tested the efficiency of Effective Microorganisms (EM) and Olive Mill Wastewater (OMW) on the growth, physiology, and quality parameters of costmary plants. Regarding to the growth parameters in general, the results showed that treatments with the two biostimulants had significant effects. Specifically, among assayed traits, statistically significant differences (\(p\leq 0.05\)) were observed respect to the type and the concentration of applied biostimulant (Figure 1A-F; Table 1); the treated plants showed better performances than the Control. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Growth** & & **Sum of** & **Mean of** & & **df** & **F** & **PR(-F) 1** & **Effect Size** \\
**Parameters** & & **Squares** & **Squares** & **df** & **F** & **PR(-F) 1** & 0.94 \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{LN n} & Model & 30,763.8 & 7690.9 & 4 & 72 & \(1.38\times 10^{-11}\) & 0.94 \\  & Residual & 2137.1 & 106.9 & 20 & & & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{LA (cm\({}^{2}\))} & Model & 13,653.1 & 3413.3 & 4 & 70.5 & \(2.58\times 10^{-24}\) & 0.79 \\  & Residual & 3532.4 & 48.4 & 73 & & & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{SLA} & Model & 296,323.7 & 74,080.9 & 4 & 7.4 & \(4.11\times 10^{-5}\) & 0.27 \\  & Residual & 802,888.7 & 10,036.1 & 80 & & & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{LWR} & Model & 0.2 & 0 & 4 & 35.8 & \(4.01\times 10^{-17}\) & 0.64 \\  & Residual & 0.1 & 0 & 80 & & & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{LAR} & Model & 237,042.6 & 59,260.7 & 4 & 22.9 & \(1.27\times 10^{-12}\) & 0.53 \\  & Residual & 207,305.9 & 2591.3 & 80 & & & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{FWL (g)} & Model & 9705.5 & 2426.4 & 4 & 36.2 & \(6-79\times 10^{-9}\) & 0.88 \\  & Residual & 1340.7 & 67 & 20 & & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Analysis of variance for growth parameters. Figure 1: Box plots representing the variation in plant growth at the end of the treatments, for (**A**) leaf fresh weight, (**B**) leaf dry weight, (**C**) root fresh weight, (**D**) root dry weight, (**E**) total fresh weight, and (**F**) total dry weight in response to the application of EM and OWM biostimulants at two concentrations in _Tanactum balsamita_ plants. The central line displays the median, the bottom and top of the box are the first and third quartiles. Different letters indicate significant differences (\(p<0.05\)) using the Tukey’s test. The ANOVA response for all growth factors detected huge differences in experimental results. The comparison of variance between and within experimental groups (rows \"Model\" and \"Residual\" in Table 1) indicates that the variance of treatments is ever many times larger than unaccountable variance. Moreover the highly significant difference rejects for each growth features the null hypothesis that the means for the five treatments are the same (Column \"PR(>F)\"). Analyzing the paired results of the effects of different treatments, it appears that for all the growth variables there are always great differences between the EM, OMW and Control treatments and the Effect Size values always confirm a huge difference (Tables A2 and A3). The Effect Size values tend to decrease when EM and OMW treatments at different concentrations are compared to each other. Both the p-value values, corrected with the Bonferroni method (Column \"p-corr\"), confirm that for some growth features there are often no significant differences and when present, the Effect size values indicate low differences between treatments (Tables A2 and A3). Analysis of the different growth parameters showed statistically significant differences. The treated plants showed an average fresh leaves weight (81.6 g) that was about 48 g greater than the Control plants; and the higher value of FWL was observed in the E1 treatment with 88.7 g (Figure 1A; Table A4). Leaves dry weight (DWL) showed an increase from 120% (O1; E2) to about 150% (O2; E1) compared to the Control (Figure 1B and Table A4).