Impact of Pre-Sowing Red Light Treatment of Sweet Corn Seeds on the Quality and Quantity of Yield
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper aims to describe the effect of pre-sowing red light treatment of sweet corn seeds on the quantity and quality of yield. It represents a step forward in the literature, but this manuscript needed major revisions.
Major concerns:
In line 72, the Authors cited that the experiments were conducted in two seasons (2018 and 2019), but in the 2.3 section of the manuscript is not indicated that the field experiments were replicated over two years and, above all, in the section 2.4 about statistical analysis the Authors should mention how they have treated the data (did you make the mean between years and why?).
In the section 2.2 more information about the light treatments are necessary: for example, how much last a treatment? Which is the time interval between treatments in K2 and K3?
In the section 2.3 important information are lacking. - First of all, it is not indicated the location of the experimental field. - Then it is necessary to mention the meteorological data of the years of study in the area of field trials . - In lines 91-93 the Authors mentioned about pH and nutrients analyses, but did not reported values. why? - In lines 100-101 the Authors indicated two periods of harvesting. Why? One for 2018 and the other for 2019? - Line 101-104 Why did you not report the data of moisture content?as well as that of Wb index (line 115)? - What is the RADWAG scale (line 118)?
Letters of significance, in Figures 3 to 5, are not easy to be understood. Please, revise. For example, I don’t understand the meaning of ‘bad’, ‘cab’ or ‘dabc’ etc. in Figures 3. Please, check this in all the figures.
Lines 142-144. The statement “the obtained statistical mean…. cultivars” is not supported by the statistical analysis. The authors must indicate the r2 value for the correlation among factors.
Lines 160-163: the comments are not supported by the data in figure 4, since for cv. Shaker the higher values were reported in K2 treatment, and especially the lowest values were always highlighted by the control and not as indicated in lines 161-163. So revise these comments.
Discussion: this part needs a significant improvement through citation of available literature data. More speculation are necessary about the efficiency of K2 treatment, for example.
Conclusions: it is unusual to organize this section point-by-point. I suggest to erase the points and to make general conclusions not repeating values.
Other minor comments:
- Line 78 change ‘replications’ with ‘times’
- Line 79 I would not use ‘0’ to indicate the batch of untreated seeds, but I think it is more appropriate the term ‘control’ here and throughout the manuscript
- Lines 80-86 I suggest to use letters instead of numbers to indicate the different part of the device to avoid misunderstanding with the references. Change also in the figure 1.
- Line 89: it is not necessary to repeat the reference 20 also in caption of the figure 1
- Line 90: I think it is necessary to add ‘and data collection’ to the title of Section 2.3
- Line 125: add manufacturer data for the software adopted for statistical analysis.
- Lines 127-128: are not necessary.
- Lines 158-159: revise. Not clear comment.
- Line 221: erase ‘cm’ after 19.2
- Line 233: round the numbers without decimal.
Author Response
Please kindly find the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Abstract and other sentences: Please, change the word regimen to word mode. The word regimen is typically used in medical meaning.
Lines 42-43. Priming and conditioning are the same process, but by different authors. But what is seed granulating? Do you mean seed pelleting?
L122 Turkey instead of Tukey
Line 127: Vales instead of values
Line 140 Means with the same letter are NOT significantly different
and in the Figure 2 why do you have letter combinations as ca, or da, db? These combinations are wrong, if you use multiply range test. Or please, explain better your variants in the figure2.
dtto all other figures. Please, show to readers minimum significant differences (HSD), if you used Tukey.
I am not able to verify your results because Figures are not understandable. They look like full of statistics but without precise explanation of differences between means.
Author Response
Please kindly find the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
you have provided significant responces to all my reviewing-points, exception for that concerning the letters of significance. I still have doubts since normally the highest values is signed with 'a', the second with 'b', and so on. For example, in Figure 2 the value with 'a' is the lowest, the values signed with 'h' and 'e' are similar, the value with 'j' is the highest and so I think it should have the letter 'a' as well as the value with'a' should be signed with 'l' ...etc. Please, check this aspect in all the figures and revise, since it is really unclear how the letters of significance are associated to the values in all the figures.
Regards
Author Response
Please kindly find the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
