Generating the Baseline in the Early Detection of Bud Rot and Red Ring Disease in Oil Palms by Geospatial Technologies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript is interesting and the idea has merit. However it suffers from poor introduction of the pertinent ideas, confusing and incomplete methods, and too many results.  Reduce the number of images and tables.   Also, this piece should better tie into remote sensing by including an accuracy assessment such as a confusion matrix. I am not confident that the results of the ANOVA are valid due to likely assumption violations and no Bonferroni adjustment for multiple comparisons.  Substantial effort needs to be put into explaining the atmospheric correction.  Without it your multiptemporal analysis is flimsy because you cant ascertain if reductions in index value are simply reduced illumination.

Things got better in the discussion with some key points identified.  Overall this paper needs a tremendous amount of work in terms of grammar and organization.  It made it difficult to assess the scientific merit.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear valued reviewer,

we have considered all of your concerns and constructive criticism about our manuscript. Your comments and suggestions have been all replied, point by point. You will see all of them attached / mentioned on the sidebar of the attached document and hereby you will be confirmed, that based on your input our manuscript improved considerably and drastically for the better. Your effort of helping us with your experience has allowed us to present a much more significant piece of research, which wouldn´t have been possible without your support. Please find attached the corrected version of our manuscript, which as we hope, will convince you that the manuscript may be ready for publication in this prestigious journal.

Many thanks again, on behalf of all authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The research answer to a general question in precision agriculture: how to earlier detect and prevent diseases in agriculture? The methodology can be applied to all type of other vegetative crops.

Is it relevant and interesting?

Yes it is relevant.

How original is the topic? What does it add to the subject area compared
with other published material?

The authors propose a methodology to detect diseases that does not present a visible symptomatology at the beginning in palms .

Is the paper well written? Is the text clear and easy to read?

Yes it is well written, text is clear and easy to read.

Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments
presented? Do they address the main question posed?

Yes conclusions are consistent and present good arguments.

Definitively, Accept as it is.

Author Response

Dear valued reviewer,

we have considered all of your concerns and constructive criticism about our manuscript. Your comments and suggestions have been all replied, point by point. You will see all of them attached / mentioned on the sidebar of the attached document and hereby you will be confirmed, that based on your input our manuscript improved considerably and drastically for the better. Your effort of helping us with your experience has allowed us to present a much more significant piece of research, which wouldn´t have been possible without your support. Please find attached the corrected version of our manuscript, which as we hope, will convince you that the manuscript may be ready for publication in this prestigious journal.

Many thanks again, on behalf of all authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Mayor corrections:

• Abstract:
  • Some phrases in the abstract are not well structured. “Oil palm cultivation in Ecuador is one of the most important for the agricultural sector”à Oil palm cultivation in Ecuador is one of the most important employment sources for the agricultural sector.
  • The authors should insert some results in the abstract. For example, which is the best band combination for detecting the diseases in oil palm crops.
• Introduction:
  • The introduction is hard to read. The text is not well structured. The author should structure well the introductions. Firstly, the main problems should be explained. Then the different solutions should be presented and explain why these solutions are not able. Consequently, the actual solution should be presented. Finally, the proposed system is displayed.
  • The paragraph where is presented the proposed system is so concise. The authors should provide more details about the proposed solution.
  • The authors should insert a paragraph introducing the rest content of the paper. For example, “The rest of the paper is structure…”.
  • All abbreviations used in the paper should be explained in the introduction.
• Study area:
  • The authors should explain why they have selected the proposed studied area.
• Material:
  • The authors should reference the different used cameras for the experiment.
  • The authors should provide more information about the images that they used in the experiment. The characteristics….
  • The abbreviation of the different bands or bands combination should be explained. For example, Normalized Vegetation Index (NVDI).
• Methodology:
  • Figure 4 is not referenced in the text.
  • The authors should revise all the figures and adapt the format to the template.
  • The authors should provide more information about the different combinations of the bands and the different equations that are used to obtain the results.
• Results
  • Figure 6 has not axes.
  • Table 5 has two titles with the same name. The authors should change one of the titles because will be confused.
  • Figure 7 is not represented in the text
  • The authors should review the figure list. They do not have the figure 8.
  • The results are hard to understand. The authors should improve the results section.

Minor corrections:

• Authors should:
• Start the introduction paragraph below the “Introduction” title.
• Change the references in the text and adequate as is indicated in the template using square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation.
• Revise the references because are not in the correct format. The references should be indicated using squares [] and numbers to list them.
• Change the font of figures, and quite the italics
• Revise the text in methodology subsection “D” is not the same as the rest of the paper. Besides, the authors should see the template to use the correct font in the subsections.
• Insert the bar scale and the legend on the same site in all the figures.
• Insert a section “Acknowledgments”
• Sections in the paper should be listed with numbers.
• The title of subsection B in the results section should be revised.
• The title of figure 6 should be referenced correctly. I recommended to the authors to classify all the images in the figure with letters.
• Table 5s presented in the template.
• Figure 7 should be bigger. It is hard to see the numbers represented in the figure.
• The title of subsection “C” in the results section should be revised
• Figure 14 should be revised. The legend is needed and the scale bar is not inside of the image.
• The title of table 7 should be modified as is represented in the template
• The last paragraph of the conclusion section should be revised, is indifferent font.

The paper is about an interesting topic but is hard to read and difficult to follow what the authors performed in the experiment. In addition, formatting errors are huge. The authors should review it thorough

Author Response

Dear valued reviewer,

we have considered all of your concerns and constructive criticism about our manuscript. Your comments and suggestions have been all replied, point by point. You will see all of them attached / mentioned on the sidebar of the attached document and hereby you will be confirmed, that based on your input our manuscript improved considerably and drastically for the better. Your effort of helping us with your experience has allowed us to present a much more significant piece of research, which wouldn´t have been possible without your support. Please find attached the corrected version of our manuscript, which as we hope, will convince you that the manuscript may be ready for publication in this prestigious journal.

Many thanks again, on behalf of all authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Many thanks to the authors for making the required changes in the previous revision. The article has improved in its structure and content, making it suitable for publication.