Germination of Seeds Subjected to Temperature and Water Availability: Implications for Ecological Restoration
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors studied the sensitivity of Betula platyphylla seeds to germination temperature and drought stress (water availability). They found that low temperature and drought stress play a key role as factors limiting seed germination. According to the authors, this could be one of the bottlenecks for population regeneration.
Seeds of the genus Betula are nondormant and belong to the orthodox category, i.e. they tolerate considerable desiccation (even up to 6-8%). The authors found family variation in response to drought stress at different temperatures.
Below my comments and remarks:
L19 (abstract): Did you use “seed germination coefficient” as a general formulation for all germination parameters you used in your study?
L86: Capital letter after semicolon: Low – low
L91: Where this seed orchard is located and where do the families come from (map, climatic conditions)?
L92-97: Seed orchards are clonal rather than half-sib (generative). You are probably talking about seedlings seed orchard or generative seed orchards. How many families are grown at this site? Why were only four families selected and how many trees per family were the seeds collected from? Did you weigh 1000 seeds in three replicates to get a mass of 1000 seeds? How many seeds (per family or per tree) did you use in each replicate to measure the length and width of the seeds? I really appreciate your patience and accuracy in measuring the seeds of a very small birch seeds by digital caliper. It is a very time consuming method.
L106 – 109: This sounds like instructions or a recipe, not a method statement. Please rewrite these two sentences.
L117: I think the specification of a unit (mm) is not necessary here
L121: Change “germination percentage (GP)” to “germination capacity (GC)”
L124-138 (formulas): Please add the units where possible (e.g. % in formula 1). For what reason did you choose these non-standard parameters? I was wondering why you did not use a very useful parameter like T50? Could you explain this reason?
L132: rather “peak value” than “peal value”
L136-138: I have doubts about the use of the parameter VI in relation to germinating seeds. Is it correct?
L150, 172 and 195: In the abbreviation of effects (T, D and F) there is no connection between text and tables
L150 (Results): I have a general comment on this chapter. It is difficult to see and understand the differences between the families in terms of each factor. I would also have expected much more about the germination rate. In general, in the figures, you show only one interaction F×T×D.
L197-199: Use an abbreviation (GP, GR and so on)
L202 – 222: Move this to the Introduction
L230: Capital letter (Relatively); italics (B. platyphylla)
L274: italics (Betula platyphylla)
L288: Unfortunately, you did not try to discuss your results in reference to origin of seeds. Why GP of 3-22 and 3-42 was higher than that of 3-4 and 3-43 at low temperature? I my opinion, in addition to the general description of the adaptation mechanism, you should also consider this point. By the way, this is not a conclusions but rather summarize of results.
L299: I would be more cautious in drawing such conclusions based on a single study (not repeated in another year) and only four families.
Fig.2 – 5: Please add units on the y-axis. What do the bars mean? Is it a standard error? Please explain in the caption
Table 1: Were there statistical differences between families in seed traits? I am not sure you need to give seed length and width with three-digit precision. I think two is definitely sufficient.
Author Response
Please refer to the attachment below
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The article with the title: "Germination of seeds subjected to temperature and water availability: Implications for ecological restoration", is a well-executed text in terms of content, but I think it could be improved a bit more because in some sections it tends to be scarce or difficult to understand.
The introduction seems to me to be well thought out, but the hypotheses seem very general to me. I would propose some objectives, more than hypotheses because then I do not see that they are talked about in the rest of the article and a conclusion can be drawn to affirm or deny the hypotheses.
In material and methods, the seeds are preserved after being collected or used directly in the experiment?
Line 101: those hours of light and darkness, what are the temperatures?
Regarding the germination parameters, I think I would remove the germination rate and put a T50 if you follow a count of the seeds from time to time, because it can provide more information.
In addition, in the graphs, you put in the first one that you look at in percentage, but in the rest, you do not know the units that are used, so it is difficult to make comparisons between treatments.
Results, from my point of view, I think you have a lot of information in the graphs and then when I was reading your text, when I realized it was already in the discussion and I think that this part should be explained more, because you have a lot of information. The last section that only has 4 lines, I don't know why it is, because for so little information, I wouldn't put it.
Line 140-141: you have set temperature twice in a row
In the discussion I think there are few bibliographic citations in some section, such as the last one where there are 5 and to discuss I think there are few. I think I should give it a spin and get closer to the hypotheses raised because in the end in the conclusions, I do not see what implications there are for ecological restoration
You can remove the article, but with a review of the content
Author Response
Please refer to the attachment below
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The article has improved a lot with the changes
The important thing is that the modifications I suggested have been made, the only drawback I see is that the results are still scarce, as the graphs are not further explained. And there is still little discussion with other articles.
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
We would like to thank you again for your efforts in reviewing our manuscript “Germination of seeds subjected to temperature and water availability: Implications for ecological restoration”(ID: forests-1987584), and providing many helpful comments and suggestions, which will all prove invaluable in the revision and improvement of our paper, as well as in guiding our research in the future.
We have studied your comments point by point, revised the manuscript accordingly. The amendments are highlighted in red in the revised manuscript. All authors have approved the response letter and the revised version of the manuscript. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing:
Reviewer :
Comments： The important thing is that the modifications I suggested have been made, the only drawback I see is that the results are still scarce, as the graphs are not further explained. And there is still little discussion with other articles.
Response：We have enriched the content of the results and also added discussions with other articles.
