Phenotypic Analysis of Germination Time of Individual Seeds Affected by Microenvironment and Management Factors for Cohort Research in Plant Factory
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript entitled "Phenotypic analysis of germination time of individual seeds affected by microenvironment and management factors for cohort research in plant factory" by Hayashi et al. propose a new method to analyze the progression of germination in individual seeds. I think the experiments are well designed and explained in detail, and this new method could be useful for the seed research community. However, I not completely sure about the new advances of this technique compared to that proposed by Joosen et al. 2010 (Germinator: a software package for high‐throughput scoring and curve fitting of Arabidopsis seed germination, Plant J. 2010 Apr 1;62(1):148-59. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-313X.2009.04116.x) and by Likterink and Hilhorst (High-Throughput Scoring of Seed Germination., Methods Mol Biol. 2017;1497:57-72. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-6469-7_7.).
Authors should explain the differences between the technique they proposed and the previous one published. They should highlight the advantages and disadvantages of both techniques.
This discussion will give scientific soundness and significance of content to this paper.
Minor questions:
"Line 19-20 Understanding of the germination time from sowing to THE outbreak of the radicle from seed coat at a single seed level remains elusive." What does mean "germination time" in this context?
-HAI should be replaced by "hours of imbibition (HOI)". Once seeds are immersed in water they imbibe in two phases (it is a continuous physiological process).
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for taking the time to review our work. We appreciate your prompt review with instructive suggestions. We are delighted to have the opportunity to improve our manuscript.
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Point 1: I am not completely sure about the new advances of this technique compared to that proposed by Joosen et al. 2010 (Germinator: a software package for high‐throughput scoring and curve fitting of Arabidopsis seed germination, Plant J. 2010 Apr 1;62(1):148-59. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-313X.2009.04116.x) and by Likterink and Hilhorst (High-Throughput Scoring of Seed Germination., Methods Mol Biol. 2017;1497:57-72. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-6469-7_7.). Authors should explain the differences between the technique they proposed and the previous one published. They should highlight the advantages and disadvantages of both techniques. This discussion will give scientific soundness and significance of content to this paper.
Response 1: We appreciate the reviewer’s point and suggestion. The suggested past studies are indeed respected research, using comparatively higher priced system, with a focus on basic research mainly with Arabidopsis. While on the other hands, our technique or designed system rather emphasizes practicality and scalability in commercial cultivation in a closed plant production system, using low cost and compact cameras and sensors, along with cultivation method similar to the one in commercial plant factories. Furthermore, this system enables us to assess how microenvironment and management factors affect germination time of individual seeds. We have added sentences to explain the previous studies and also to highlight the features of our study following the reviewer’s suggestion (L27; L75-76; L88-91; L391-393).
Point 2: "Line 19-20 Understanding of the germination time from sowing to THE outbreak of the radicle from seed coat at a single seed level remains elusive." What does mean "germination time" in this context?
Response 2: We apologies for the confusion. Germination time in this context means time from sowing to the outbreak of the radicle from seed coat. We have made a modification to make the sentence a little clearer (L19-20).
Point 3: HAI should be replaced by "hours of imbibition (HOI)". Once seeds are immersed in water they imbibe in two phases (it is a continuous physiological process)
Response 3: Thank you for the suggestion. We have added hours of imbibition in the same sentence (L188-189).
Thank you very much for your consideration of this manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
General comments:
The manuscript entitled “Phenotypic analysis of germination time of individual seeds affected by microenvironment and management factors for cohort research in plant factory" developed a plant phenotype measurement system was to assess the effects of microenvironment and management factors on germination time of individual seeds for plant cohort research.
I suggest some suggestions and corrections to the authors, which are further listed:
Specific comments:
- The abstract seems too general. I would suggest rewriting the abstract (background, methodology, results, the impact of the research).
- What could be the effects on large/medium scale plant factory as this was a very small unit, means controlling and handling, and other variety or microenvironmental factors?
- The authors mentioned so many limitations and future studies of this research. Why the authors didn’t consider it during experimental design?
- The impacts of this research should be clearly and concisely mentioned at the end of the conclusion section.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for taking the time to promptly review our work and providing instructive suggestions. We appreciate the opportunity to improve our manuscript. Thank you.
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Point 1: The abstract seems too general. I would suggest rewriting the abstract (background, methodology, results, the impact of the research).
Response 1: We appreciate the reviewer’s point and suggestion. We have rewritten the abstract mainly adding feature of our study/designed system (L20-22; L27).
Point 2: What could be the effects on large/medium scale plant factory as this was a very small unit, means controlling and handling, and other variety or microenvironmental factors?
Response 2: Thank you for your comment. The developed plant phenotype measurement system emphasizes practicality and scalability in commercial plant production in plant factories. The system achieves low cost with compact cameras and sensors enabling it to be applicable in commercial plant factories. Furthermore, this module system emphasizes scalability since the cultivation method is similar to the one in commercial plant factories. We have added sentences to highlight the features of our study (L27; L75-76; L88-91; L391-393).
Point 3: The authors mentioned so many limitations and future studies of this research. Why the authors didn’t consider it during experimental design?
Response 3: We appreciate the reviewer’s point. We have set aside some of the future study plans following the reviewer’s constructive comment (L370-373).
Point 4: The impacts of this research should be clearly and concisely mentioned at the end of the conclusion section.
Response 4: The conclusion section has been added at the end of the manuscript with the impacts of this research (L388-401).
Thank you very much.
