Development of Novel Hybrid Models for Prediction of Drought- and Stress-Tolerance Indices in Teosinte Introgressed Maize Lines Using Artificial Intelligence Techniques

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper deals with developing a novel hybrid model for the prediction of drought and stress-tolerant indices in teosinte introgressed maize lines using artificial intelligence techniques.

The subject of how complex structures are encoded in nature and in art is interesting.

The conclusion is thorough.

The references, although varied, are up to date. Which says a lot.

I suggest you add the following works to the sections of the related work about Artificial Intelligence Technologies: 

1. Ryabchuk N., Grishko N., Grishko V., Rudenko, Petryk V., Bapiyev I., Fedushko S. Artificial Intelligence Technologies Using in Social Engineering Attacks. CEUR Workshop Proceedings. Vol-2654: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Cyber Hygiene (CybHyg-2019). pp. 546-555. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2654/paper43.pdf
2. N. M. Tahir, Adam N. Ausat, Usman I. Bature, Kamal A. Abubakar, Ibrahim Gambo, "Off-line Handwritten Signature Verification System: Artificial Neural Network Approach", International Journal of Intelligent Systems and Applications(IJISA), Vol.13, No.1, pp.45-57, 2021. DOI: 10.5815/ijisa.2021.01.04

Thank you for the opportunity to review this engaging and valuable paper. I wish you every success in your joint and individual future research projects.

Author Response

Thank you for your suggestions, your suggestions has been incorporated.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

the text is interesting and the results of the research can be applied to many regions of the world.

I ask the authors to comment on the following:

1. Are two years (2016 and 2017) enough to draw adequate conclusions?

I think that this is a short period or a strong argument is needed.

2. In the manuscript it is necessary to point out possible shortcomings in the research and to point out new research that would build on this manuscript.

Author Response

Thank you for your suggestions, your suggestions has been incorporated.

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript reports important findings on developing an AI-based hybrid model for predicting drought and stress-tolerant indices in maize. However, a few issues need to be addressed by the authors. My comments and suggestions can be found below. 

Title
I suggest changing the title to 'Development of novel hybrid models...'

Abstract
Please include a problem statement at the beginning of the abstract. 

Introduction
The introduction section is lengthy. Please reduce the number of paragraphs and make the section brief and concise. 
Line 69: climate-proof
The statement ' The focus should be given to...(Line 70) is confusing. Please delete it.
Also, in Line 70, '..to feed the empty stomach..' is overstated. Please re-phrase the sentence. 
There are repetitive statements in the introduction section as follows:
Line 68-70 and Line 88-89 on the urgent need for the study 
Line 89-90 and Line 128-129 on the hypothesis statement
In addition, the hypothesis statement is wrongly written. It is more like an objective statement than a hypothesis in both cases. It is good to include both hypothesis and objective at the end of the introduction section and write them correctly. 
Please also ensure that each point is only mentioned once. 

Line 104 appears too early, and it is better to remove it. 

Materials and method
Line 139 and 141 - Is there a need to italicize the word 'Kharif'?  Is it a name of a location? Then, it is not necessary to italicize it. I recommend adding the name of a region/county after the city name for clarity. 
Line 142 - What is rabi referring to? Is it also a location? 

Conclusion
This section could be written more concisely by only summarizing the major findings. Please remove the method description (Line 389-391) from this section. 

The English language of the manuscript can be improved. There are several grammatical errors. I suggest that the author send it for proofreading or ask anyone with good written English to review it and correct all the grammatical errors and sentence structure. 

Author Response

Thank you for your suggestions, your suggestions has been incorporated.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx