with (CiR) > 0.25 pores per pore.

2.4. Statistical analysis

Data processing was performed using Microsoft Excel 2023 (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA, USA), and different treatments were subjected to analysis of variance and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) using SPSS 27.0 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA). Graphical representations, including bar charts, box plots, line graphs, and PCA plots, were generated using Origin 2022 (OriginLab Corporation, Northampton, MA, USA). Alpha diversity of the microbial communities was assessed based on the operational taxonomic unit levels by calculating the Abundance-based coverage estimator (ACE) and Shannon indices. Beta diversity of the microbial communities was evaluated using Principal Coordinates Analysis (PCoA) using the “vegan” package in R (RStudio, Boston, MA, USA). Bidirectional cluster heatmaps were created using the “Complex Heatmap” package in R (RStudio). Pearson correlation analysis and visualisation of correlations were performed using the “corrplot” package in R (RStudio). The “plspm” package in R (RStudio) was utilised to construct the Partial Least Squares Path Models (PLS-PM) to predict the pathways of explanatory variables. Redundancy analysis (RDA) was performed using Canoco version 5 (Canoco, Boston, MA, USA).