Ortet Age Effect, Anatomy and Physiology of Adventitious Rooting in Tilia mandshurica Softwood Cuttings
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear colleagues!The authors' research is fundamental and applied. The results of the work complement the understanding of the processes of vegetative propagation of woody plants. The authors conducted experiments and identified the optimal age of the Tilia mandshurica plant for cuttings. The authors' conclusions will help solve the problem of biodiversity conservation and forest restoration from the local Tilia species.The use of modern statistical methods inspires confidence in the results of the study.The authors also described in detail the results of the work, illustrated their judgments, and conducted a competent discussion of the results.However, to improve the manuscript, I recommend making some additions.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have conducted important research into a notoriously difficult genus to propagate. The data appear very interesting and relevant, however the paper requires a lot of editing to be understandable.
Please have this very carefully edited for English fluency. There are some strange words chosen throughout and multiple places where the sentences are poorly written.
Lines 46-48: Can the authors please find a clearer way to explain cutting propagation – this sentence is quite difficult to read and attempts to combine more than one aspect in the sentence – split it into the process and then a separate sentence for the totipotency (which for optimal readability should really defined here too).
Line 52: Cuttage is not a word (it appears in a number of places. Please carefully check throughout for accurate English.
Line 57: new paragraph
Line75-76 – polarity should be flat? What does that mean? Surface of cut should be….again clarity of writing is very important. I won’t comment everywhere about details but do take the time to get this carefully edited.
Lines 85: please present the hormone treatments as Molar values.
Line 87: what is Carbendazim – why was it chosen. Please explain.
Acronyms are really bad to use – none of: TCN (which should just be how many cuttings were taken), TRCN, TRN (which doesn’t mean anything at all) TRL, RR, MRN and MRL should be used. These are confusing and not a standard in the field.
Total root number is not a thing – unless it’s the number per cutting and then it’s the mean or spread of these values that matter – Total root number suggest adding all the roots on all the cuttings together which is not a relevant measure.
Total rooted cuttings number is also not normally used – it should be rooting percentage (the percentage of cuttings that rooted for each treatment etc).
Total cutting number should be replicates (so just say replicates).
Total root length – is that the length of each adventitious root on a single cutting added together? (that’s the only valid data point that I can think of that this could represent).
Rooting rate presumably is the time taken (rate is a time value) and the calculation shown is for rooting percentage not a rate of anything.
Mean root number – again this is the one that should be used over total root number
Mean root length presumably is the length of each root on a single cutting added together and then divided by the number of roots on that cutting. (the calculations are unclear because the individual traits are not clearly defined).
I’m really struggling to understand the methods because of the vague writing. Looking at the figures in results there is great data in this paper and lots of it.
I’d like the rooting percentage and any other morphological data to be presented as figures rather than as a table.
The captions need a lot more information – how many replicates per data point, are the error bars standard deviation or standard error, explain the asterisk significance values (I presume * is significant at 0.05, ** at 0.01 and ** at 0.001 but it needs to be in the caption). Also spell out any acronyms on the figures (so spell out POD in the caption, PPO activity and so on) I also don’t really recognise the use of U /g/min – I’m guessing it’s units of enzyme activity per gram of something per minute – make that is well defined in the methods, reminded again in the results and explained in the captions.
Again the discussion needs heavy editing. Looking at the citations there are a lot of important papers not cited here so I would also encourage a careful search of the literature for papers on maturation and adventitious rooting – groups such as Diaz-sala, Rasmussen and Bellini are not cited at all and yet are extremely relevant to this work.
Having said that I really like the data and experiments (assuming my assumptions are correct since it’s hard to read!). This is an important contribution to the field.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
The manuscript focus on the adventitious rooting of cuttings taken from Tilia mandshurica ortets of different ages, to evaluate the ortet age on the rooting response of softwood cuttings. The subject is interesting, as donor plant age strongly affect rooting response of materials, particularly in difficult-to-root woody species. Furthermore, they performed anatomical analysis to investigate the cutting tissues from which root primordia were initiated They also analysed changes of sugar, enzymatic activities and hormone content during the adventitious rooting process.
The topic of the manuscript is relevant and fits well the scope of the journal. However, it presents some shortcomings, that need to be addressed before publication. I have included in the pdf file some comments to be taken into account.
Although English is not my mother tongue, I think the style of English should be improved. I have had difficulties to understand some of the sentences, particularly along the results section.
I would recommend that the authors proofread their manuscript to significantly improve the English and correct the grammatical and editorial errors.
My comments:
1- Some abbreviations first appear in the text are not use the full name, such as 1-MCP, ABA) such us PPO, POD, IAA….
2- The term of propagation by cuttings is more used than the “cuttage” term
3- Line 49: The statement of “cuttage has the advantage of high coefficient” is not precise, would you mean high production or high rooting coefficient??.
4- Adventitious roots formation should be changed by adventitious root formation. The same for adventitious roots elongation, which appears several times along the manuscript (see notes on the pdf file)
5- In the results section, subheadings must be in the results section, the subtitle sentences must be spelled properly (organic nutrient measurements instead of organic nutrient measurements, or changed by “Determination of organic nutrients….
6- Results section:
- In my opinion these section should be rewritten:
Subtitles are not well defined. For instance, in 3.1, please change Adventitious rooting in different ortet ages by Effect of ortet age on adventitious rooting of cuttings or Adventitious rooting in cuttings from ortets of different ages. Similarly, the subheadings 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5
-Description of the results should be also rewritten. In general, the description of the results should be improved, both in the content and the English style language. Some sentences are unclear and difficult to understand (subsection 3.3; 3.4; 3.5).
7- The events and kinetics of adventitious rooting could be different according to the ortet age. Therefore, the ortet age (2- or 7-year old) from which the cuttings were taken must be stated in the captions of figures 1 and 2
The time frame of sections showed in Figure 2 should be also included in the caption of Figure 2
Regarding to Fig 2 h, it is not clear that roots arise from callus. They may arise from the vascular cambium and then they growth out through the callus formed around the wounding site.
Line 284, 533, 534, 538, 543, 552, 566, 568, 577: Adventitious roots elongation, please remove “s” from roots
Line 466, Adventitious roots development, please remove s from roots
Line 494, 515, 537, 539, 541, 557, Adventitious roots formation, please remove s from roots.
8- -In the discussion section, authors referred the effects of the different enzymes, hormones etc..in terms of their role either on root induction or root elongation. However, in my opinion the induction period lasted few days and most of changes occurring after day 10th are associated to the to root initiation process.
In general, the manuscript should be rewritten before publication.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Autors,
All of my comments have been addressed.
Minor comment
In the sentence in line 417: Please change The IAA by the IAA (lowercase)
After this, The IAA level decreased gradually from the 417 30th- to 60th day (Figure 6a).
Author Response
Dear reviewer, according to your opinion, I have changed "The IAA" by "the IAA" in line 417.
