Response of Upland Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Inoculated with Non-Native Plant Growth-Promoting Bacteria
, Kenji Irie 1, Naoto Tanaka 2, Hidehiko Kikuno 3, Babil Pachakkil 1 and Hironobu Shiwachi 1,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Very little corrections are necessary to define the manuscript (they are given in the attached pdf file as sticky notes) because the work is interesting, and the manuscript is very well organized and written.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
- Line 51-53- sentence not complete
The sentence was revised so as to make it clear.
- Line 120-121- meaning of acronyms
The acronyms in the Table 1 have been spelled out.
- Write “Petri” instead of “petri” dish
All three times where the word was used have been corrected
- Line 269- results of statistical analysis “except S-611”
This sentence was mistakenly left there. The results show that there was no statistically significant difference compared to the control. Thus, it has been deleted.
- Correct “treat”
There was a mistake and “treat” has been changed to “treated”
- Correlations in Table 7
Yes, RDW was significantly correlated to plant length as well as the other previously mentioned parameters. The related sentence has been revised accordingly.
- “In nitro” in italic
The word has been changed to italic
- References Nо
- 2. “nacteria” is a mistake and was corrected into “bacteria”
- 38. Characters font was uniformed.
- 45. Bold font was changed
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Intorduction is very short and can be more detailled and focussed regarding the backgroud, improtance of the study and novelty.
Captions of the tables should not be in bold and written in the titel, not below the table.
Discussion must be improved by shortining and focussing it. Data should be out in a nutshell.
Figure 1: subfigures should be marked with A; B; C; D; and mentioned in the caption. the Legend should appear in all of the subfigures, not only within A.
Line 61: does reference [21] refer to Schizolobium or to the mentioned study? In the case of the study, the reference has to be moved at the end of the sentence.
line 132: why were the bacteria used for suspensions dilluted in of sterile water, which may disturb the cells due to osmolarty difference. Bacterial dillution should be done by using NaCl.
Line 313-314: Abbrevaitions should be placed direch behind the write out words
Line 391: Metioned studies should be cited.
Line 395 and 39: Reference is placed behind the comma- it shloud be moved to the end of the sentence.
Author Response
- Intorduction is very short and can be more detailled and focussed regarding the backgroud, improtance of the study and novelty.
The introduction was revised by introducing more details on the background and the importance and novelty of this study.
- Captions of the tables should not be in bold and written in the titel, not below the table.
Captions are not in bold and are written in the title for all Tables.
- Discussion must be improved by shortining and focussing it. Data should be out in a nutshell.
We have tried to shorten the Discussion by removing as much as possible the sentences referring to the results.
- Figure 1: subfigures should be marked with A; B; C; D; and mentioned in the caption. the Legend should appear in all of the subfigures, not only within A.
Figure 1 has been revised. Letters have been assigned the subfigures.
- Line 61: does reference [21] refer to Schizolobium or to the mentioned study? In the case of the study, the reference has to be moved at the end of the sentence.
Here, we were referring to the study. The reference has been moved at the end of the sentence.
- Line 132: why were the bacteria used for suspensions dilluted in of sterile water, which may disturb the cells due to osmolarty difference. Bacterial dillution should be done by using NaCl.
In this experiment, we used water instead of NaCl because salt usually negatively affects germination rate of rice seedling through reduced root growth and shoot length. In a pre-test experiment, the normal saline (0.9% equivalent to 150 mmol salt) was not better than distilled water in seedling growth. As we do not know the response of this rice variety to salt concentrations range, we used water and LB medium. Our next studies will focus on testing different inoculant formulations on bacterial survival rate as well as the response of this rice genotype to salt.
- Line 313-314: Abbrevaitions should be placed direch behind the write out words
Abbreviations have been placed directly after the words for all Tables.
- Line 391: Metioned studies should be cited.
References number 27 and 28 are mentioned.
- Line 395 and 39: Reference is placed behind the comma- it shloud be moved to the end of the
Line 395’s reference (31, new 35) was moved to the end of the sentence and sentence rephrased as well as reference 32 (new 36).
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
