Improved Prediction of Leaf Emergence for Efficacious Crop Protection: Assessing Field Variability in Phyllotherms for Upper Leaves in Winter Wheat and Winter Barley

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a well written paper based on 6-year data from 4 sites in Luxembourg.

 

Introduction, line 76-78: Please mention examples of existing decision support systems for fungicide applications in winter wheat and barley, which make use of the phyllotherm.

Figure 1, line 137-138: Data are presented as box-plots? Please add this information to the figure caption.

Figure 1, precipitation: y-axis scaling could already end at 10 or 12.5; this would improve the readability of the data.

Figure 2, line 243: add "and" between observed and predicted.

Table 3 might be moved to the supplement to shorten the manuscript.

Figure 8, L 276: delete "showing the"

 

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments are given on the manuscript document. The manuscript is well written.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript “Improved Prediction of Leaf Emergence for Efficacious Crop Protection: Assessing Field Variability in Phyllotherm for Upper Leaves in Winter Wheat and Winter Barley”, provides useful information for predicting leaf emergence of the three uppermost leaf layers in winter wheat and winter barley under variable environmental and crop conditions in Luxembourg by using phyllothem of 100°Cd.

The development on the relationship between predicted growth data and observed yield and the reduction of disease risk when pesticides are used based on the predicted data will be expected in future study.

I would recommend that this manuscript be revised as shown below.

 

L51: It is necessary to explain the detailed growth stage of GS 37–39 [e.g. L54: ear emergence (GS59)].

 

L85 “The main objective of this study was to investigate variability in phyllotherm for predicting the emergence of the three upper leaves F-2 to F in winter wheat and winter barley in the field.”

It is necessary to describe which growth stage (GS) in the whole (GS 0–69) is ‘the emergence of the three upper leaves F-2 to F’ targeted in this study.

 

L101: 250 plants m-2 and 170 to 200 plants m-2 => 250 plants m^-2and 170 to 200 plants m^-2

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx