The most uncomplicated and straightforward approach to determining the link between the disease severity of plants and different biochemical components tested at two stages of plant development is the analysis of variance (ANOVA). ANOVA is a commonly used test for comparing means across multiple groups.
In this case, you would have two factors: disease severity (categorical variable) and biochemical components (continuous variable) tested at two stages of plant development (categorical variable). You would need to conduct a two-way ANOVA to analyze the data.
The two-way ANOVA will help you determine if there are significant differences in the biochemical components based on disease severity and plant development stages. It will also reveal if there is an interaction effect between disease severity and plant development stages, indicating whether the relationship between biochemical components and disease severity differs between the two stages.
If the two-way ANOVA reveals significant effects, post-hoc tests (e.g., Tukey's HSD or Bonferroni correction) can be performed to identify specific group differences.
It is crucial to consider that the statistical test selection may vary based on the specific characteristics of your data, research questions, and the statistical software being utilized.