Assessment of Algerian Maize Populations for Saccharification and Nutritive Value

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

My comments on the manuscript “Assessment of Algerian maize populations for saccharification and nutritive value”, which has been submitted to Agronomy journal, are presented below.

The manuscript is very interesting both in scientific and practical terms. It contains gripping information on the eighteen maize populations from the Algerian Sahara were evaluated under drought and control conditions. There is a very high probability of practical use of the presented research in the maize field production in variation environments.

The Authors did not avoid minor mistakes, however they do not decrease the scientific level of the paper.

1. No information on plot size or experiment size? Please complete.
2. Please give the soil taxonomic name under the experiment taking into account the current naming. If possible, please provide soil characteristics (chemical composition, carbon content, soil pH).
3. Please provide data on agricultural technology – previous crop, sowing rate or sowing density, level of mineral fertilization, level of chemical protection of the crop. Was the agricultural technology the same for all evaluated populations of maize and all localizations? In my opinion, the level of fertilization and plant protection significantly affects the yield and chemical composition of crop plants.

In my opinion, the remaining elements of the manuscript do not raise any objections.

I recommend this paper for publication in Agronomy journal.

Author Response

Thank you for your constructive comments.

I have done my best for answering the questions as follow:

1. No information on plot size or experiment size? Please complete

R1: I have added this information

2. Please give the soil taxonomic name under the experiment taking into account the current naming. If possible, please provide soil characteristics (chemical composition, carbon content, soil pH).

R2: I have added the information I could obtain in each case

3. Please provide data on agricultural technology – previous crop, sowing rate or sowing density, level of mineral fertilization, level of chemical protection of the crop. Was the agricultural technology the same for all evaluated populations of maize and all localizations? In my opinion, the level of fertilization and plant protection significantly affects the yield and chemical composition of crop plants.

R3: I have indicated that previous crop in all cases was maize and fertilization followed the recommendations of the respective agricultural services for each environment.

The fertilization depends on the soil analyses of each place and the standard procedures of each field manager. Unfortunately, as the agricultural management is done by the technical staff, researchers do not record these data except when fertilization is an objective of the experiments. We used the agricultural technology available in each place; therefore, it was different

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is about the potential value of maize Algerian populations for feed and food and also source of biomass. It is based on values obtained from grain samples from the original seed of 11 Algerian populations and 2 Spanish checks for nutritive value (starch, ash, lipids, protein) and only 6 Algerian populations and 2 Spanish checks for saccharification values. Agronomic values are given in a non-published reference (Maafi et al.). It is a pity that the authors didn’t get before a DOI in a preprint server. I wonder if the authors should have delayed the submission of the manuscript until the publication of Maafi et al. paper. This point is the main negative point.

In addition, the interest of the manuscript is limited by the size of the experiment (number of populations and number of locations: only one with two conditions for saccharification). The manuscript is short.

In the abstract, we do not know that the evaluation of the saccharification potential value only took place in dry Spain.

In the introduction, for the description of the objectives, the expected growing area of ideotypes is missing. Is the experiment with photoperiod sensitive populations valuable for direct use in Southern Spain?

In Material & Methods, what is the harvest date for accessions? Is it the same for adapted accessions and Algerian populations? The grain moisture at harvest is expected to influence the stover quality (as in L150-L151).

The Table 1 is clear but EPS14FRC3 is missing and the title is wrong. Table 2 is clear.

The results are clear. However, I don’t understand the reason of the analysis of the effects of grain nutrients on plant development. This relation has not been discussed later with references. And other factors such as the size of the kernels, the germination quality... could have influenced these traits.

In discussion, I appreciate the paragraphs on the effect of drought on cell wall behavior.

Author Response

Thank you for your review.

I have made my best for incorporating your corrections, as follows:

1. The manuscript is about the potential value of maize Algerian populations for feed and food and also source of biomass. It is based on values obtained from grain samples from the original seed of 11 Algerian populations and 2 Spanish checks for nutritive value (starch, ash, lipids, protein) and only 6 Algerian populations and 2 Spanish checks for saccharification values.

R1: Given the time, labor and economic costs of saccharification analyses that were made in another country, we decided to optimize the task by choosing a representative sample of the collection

2. Agronomic values are given in a non-published reference (Maafi et al.). It is a pity that the authors didn’t get before a DOI in a preprint server. I wonder if the authors should have delayed the submission of the manuscript until the publication of Maafi et al. paper. This point is the main negative point.

R2: The paper by Maafi et al. was submitted to Euphytica the 20^th of December, 2019; however, unfortunately the paper is under revision nowadays. We could also say that these are “unpublished data”. Nevertheless, the agronomic data are used here only to test if modifying the nutritive value of grain would affect the agronomic value under normal and drought conditions.

3. In addition, the interest of the manuscript is limited by the size of the experiment (number of populations and number of locations: only one with two conditions for saccharification). The manuscript is short.

R3. With the populations and environments used in this study we obtained very interesting results that give valuable information and open new fields of research and can be useful for practical applications. Indeed, the number of populations and environments could have been larger if we had more resources; but, anyway, the number of populations is not low because this is a representative collection of Algerian maize; the subsequent samples used for analysis of nutrients and for saccharification are also representative samples chosen from the agronomic evaluations. The number of environments was two locations and two years for agronomic data and, therefore, for investigating the effects of grain nutrients in agronomic performance. Finally, we could carry out saccharification analyses in one loction (drought and control) because of the time, labor and economic costs, but the results are good.

4. In the abstract, we do not know that the evaluation of the saccharification potential value only took place in dry Spain.

R4: I have indicated that the evaluation of the saccharification potential value took place in the Spain under drought and control conditions.

5. In the introduction, for the description of the objectives, the expected growing area of ideotypes is missing. Is the experiment with photoperiod sensitive populations valuable for direct use in Southern Spain?

R5: I have indicated that the expected growing area of the potentially improved released varieties includes the Mediterranean area, as the populations are representative of the genetic diversity available in Spain and Algeria and the agronomic evaluations were made in both countries.

6. In Material & Methods, what is the harvest date for accessions? Is it the same for adapted accessions and Algerian populations? The grain moisture at harvest is expected to influence the stover quality (as in L150-L151).

R6: I have included information about harvest times in the text, which were different because maize growth period is different in northern Spain and northern Algeria. Indeed, grain moisture affects stover quality; actually moisture had a negative effect in saccharification, as explained in the text

7. The Table 1 is clear but EPS14FRC3 is missing and the title is wrong. Table 2 is clear.

R7: Sorry, I have corrected the title of table 1. We have not made the nutritional analysis of EPS14FRC3 because previous data showed that it was not significantly different from EPS13FRC3 for nutritive value

8. The results are clear. However, I don’t understand the reason of the analysis of the effects of grain nutrients on plant development. This relation has not been discussed later with references. And other factors such as the size of the kernels, the germination quality... could have influenced these traits.

R8: Sorry, we did not explain this in the objective. In the revised version, I have included that “we analyzed if selection for higher nutritive value could affect agronomic performance and if selection for better agronomic performance could affect saccharification value”