The Phytotoxicity of Microencapsulated Peppermint Oil on Maize (Zea mays L.) Depending on the Type of Growth Substrate and Maize Cultivar

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Topic of manuscript sent for review is interesting and currently important for sustainable agriculture production. Issue of manuscript is oriented on limitation uses of herbicide in plant production. Authors in the present article use peppermint (Mentha x piperita L.) essential oil for biological weed control.

Effectively use of essential oil without losing them activity, they should be microencapsulated or nanoencapsulated. In the review studies, as well as in many previous ones, it has been shown that these natural compounds as an essential oil can also be toxic for cultivated plants.

In the presented research, the effect of the growth medium and maize variety on its reaction on different doses of microencapsulated peppermint essential oil. Noteworthy is the very depth statistical analysis of the research data.

 

Before publication manuscript need additional improvement suggested by reviewer.

1. No information about number of pots in general and for each treatment. What was the number of replication.
2. Please explain. What was the effect of essential oil on withe mustard (Sinapis alba) - positive or negative? (Lines 53-55)
3. Correct degree symbol for Celsius Centigrade (Lines 81-83)
4. No symbol for Celsius Centigrade (Line 91)
5. Please correct “prevent leaking” of what? (lines 91-92)
6. The sentence “The tested species included four maize cultivars, single cross hybrids: cv. ‘Agrojanus’ and cv. ‘Kornfluens’, and triple cross hybrids: cv. ‘KWS Stabil’ and cv. ‘Severno’ (all provided by the KWS France) need correction. Only one species tested i.e. (Zea mays). Lines 92-94.
7. Please correct name of growing media. Instead vermiculate use vermiculite. Please add size of vermiculite particle (Line 98).
8. Lines 123-127. All presented maize traits are qualitative not quantitative.
9. Two term “phenolics leaves and phenolics roots” need correction (line 129). There are no phenolic leaves or roots.
10. At Figure 1. Change order in legend: soil 1, soil 2, vermiculite. Correct units instead g m-2, use g m^-2. Instead days -1 use days.
11. Line 191 In the figure 2c. presented soil 2 no soil 1.
12. Line 214. Correct units. Instead g m-2 use g m^-2.
13. Lines 435 and 445 – no space.
14. Line 453 use bold for 2007.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you for your review, and valuable comments, that improved our manuscript greatly.

We have followed them one-by-one. Below please find our responses:

1. No information about number of pots in general and for each treatment. What was the number of replication. = RESPONSE, we added the total number of pots and number of replications in lines 102-104
2. Please explain. What was the effect of essential oil on withe mustard (Sinapis alba) - positive or negative? (Lines 53-55) = RESPONSE we added the explanation in the Introduction, lines 57-61
3. Correct degree symbol for Celsius Centigrade (Lines 81-83) = RESPONSE corrected, lines 86-88
4. No symbol for Celsius Centigrade (Line 91) = added lines 97
5. Please correct “prevent leaking” of what? (lines 91-92) = added line 98
6. The sentence “The tested species included four maize cultivars, single cross hybrids: cv. ‘Agrojanus’ and cv. ‘Kornfluens’, and triple cross hybrids: cv. ‘KWS Stabil’ and cv. ‘Severno’ (all provided by the KWS France) need correction. Only one species tested i.e. (Zea mays). Lines 92-94. = corrected, lines 99
7. Please correct name of growing media. Instead vermiculate use vermiculite. = corrected all over the text.
8. Please add size of vermiculite particle (Line 98). = done, line 105-106
9. Lines 123-127. All presented maize traits are qualitative not quantitative. = we assumed that the traits which can be measured (grams, centimeters) are quantitative.
10. Two term “phenolics leaves and phenolics roots” need correction (line 129). There are no phenolic leaves or roots. = corrected all over the text
11. At Figure 1. Change order in legend: soil 1, soil 2, vermiculite. Correct units instead g m-2, use g m^-2. Instead days -1 use days. = corrected, please refer to Figure 1.
12. Line 191 In the figure 2c. presented soil 2 no soil 1. = corrected, line 207
13. Line 214. Correct units. Instead g m-2 use g m^-2. = corrected all over the text
14. Lines 435 and 445 – no space. = corrected
15. Line 453 use bold for 2007. = that was a citation of a book, so no bold there, according to the journals rules

With kind regards,

the authors

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript addresses an interesting topic in the use of a herbicide based on mint oil. The work is well set up and presents an in-depth statistical analysis of the data through the use of different techniques. The results obtained are clear and well discussed. Nevertheless, the authors should have explained the different mechanisms in the three substrates (leaching? adsorption? absorption?). Perhaps a hint that this issue will have to be addressed in the near future to understand the mechanism of action of the herbicide. Nevertheless, the manuscript is well done and deserves to be published after these small additions.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review and kind comments.

We did changes you asked for in the Discussion part (lines 325-330) and in the conclusions part in the lines 367-369.

With kind regards,

the authors

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper is not publishable at this stage. Significant changes are needed. The author has done a lot of work, and showed some good results. But the structure and language of this paper need to be significantly improved. The data analysis did not make it easier for readers to understand even with good statistical analysis. I suggest to simplify data and texts, presenting only objective-related data and results. Results are not much convincible, some of them are even contradictory. Even with good statistical analysis, the results were not simplified and the description did not reflect 100% to the figure.

 

1. Introduction

            The introduction showed the significance of Eos as an herbicide and their potential phytotoxicity. I would suggest to expand why you chose vermiculite in your experiment? Are there any other similar studies have been carried out using vermiculite? What are their results?

Line36: Are you trying to say “One of the prospective EOs for weed control is peppermint (Mentha x piperita L.) EO?”

Line 38: Peppermint is a plant, the EOs are from it. Are you trying to say “Peppermint EO is one of the most… EOs?”

Line 41: “both American…” delete “both”, add a” ,” after American

Line 41-42: A little confusing, change it into “pepper mint EO has a lower price comparing to other EOs due to its broad....”

Line 65: a little confusing, “the latter” refers to what? Be specific. Most of the “it, they, latter, this etc. “  in your manuscript need to be specific, otherwise would cause misunderstanding

 

2. Material and Method

    This section needs to be significantly changed. Subsections needs to be created by dividing the whole big section. Try to use subsections such as “Plant material”, “experimental design” “measurement” “data analysis”. Your manuscript needs to be significantly restructured for a better understanding based on the right flow. Try to use the journal’s format to help get the right flow. You have more than one experiment, you need to describe them one by one, especially why you did the second control and the third control experiment. The last two experiments were a little confusing.

Line 87,88: delete “. After (RI. non-polar column) and 2011”

Line 91: change “C” to “°C”.

Line 102: “both of the soil…”

Line 103: “Spring 2019”?

Line 105-109: I suggest to convert those texts into a table as soil material properties, also include the vermiculite properties

Line 111: Delete “next”. You have several words which are more often used in oral instead of writing such as “next”, “then” etc. Try to make those change throughout this paper.

Line 113: “pot”

Line 114-116: A different trail? why adding this experiment? what's the objective? there's another control experiment, what's the difference? why do you do those two additional control experiments?  Again, Divide the M&M into different

Line 117: Delete ”a”

Line 119: “each of the pot,

Line 119-120: “The emergence time of maize was recorded”?

Line 122-127: How did you measure each parameter need to be specifically described. I assume the plant shoot and roots were harvested separately. Try not use bullet point to describe your measurement. Describe them in sentences.

Line 130: “the normality data were subjected to multivariate....”

Line 132: You can summaries those ‘shoot length….’ into “parameters mentioned above” instead of repeat them over and over again. Also, please be consistency when use traits or parameter. I suggest use parameter.

Line 145: Seems you have two controlled experiments??? Please describe them specific and differently so that people will know the difference. “A three way…”

3. Results

Results needs to be significantly rearranged. Some of the results are in contrary to the others. Data analysis are done to simplify the treatments but the description needs to be significantly improved. Figure 1 needs to be regenerated, need to add x, y axis, and error bar. Also, why the days have 2.2 or 2.4 as showed in figure one, the third one. If the data is averaged, you should present error bar and explained in your figure caption.

Line 172: delete “,” between showed that. Make the same change for other places.

Line 173: “On the contrary” or “Contrarily”. Make the same change for other places.

Line 174: what are “those pots” referring to? In the clayey soil pots?

Line 176: Change “but” into “and”

Line 177: Delete “the”

Line 179: “what do you mean by "not noted"? they emerged at the same time as the control or earlier?” I can get what you mean by seeing the figure, but you need to describe it correct. ” Among the tested maize cultivars..”

Line 191-192: Is sandy soil the highest among the three? What about the soil 2?

Line 194: “in the second leaf”. Make the same change throughout this paper. Be consistency.

Line 197-198: “In the clayed soil 2,....”

Line 198: “for the same pair…”. which one? based on the heatmap, it was all but the exception you mentioned below. need to be specific. Figure 2: font size in the figures needs to be increased significantly

Line 203, 204, 205, 208. Be consistency. “showed that..” “parameter…” the second leaf..

Line 208-209: Should the three way interactions be described first since they were the first interaction we checked?

Line 227: “Contrarily..”

Line 227-228:  ...in maize roots from the two soils were several times higher than ....

Line 255: In your figure 1, vermiculite delayed more than soil one or soil two for different cultivars, how come they grow better than those in soil1 or soil 2? Can you explain this?

Line 260: the most susceptible cultivar...

Table 2: Have you conducted a statistical analysis to the data? I suggest you run a Turkey test so that you can say which one has the lowest and  highest susceptibility

Line 278-290: Again, why are you doing this control experiment. Supplementary materials are information that should be help to understand your main results. However, you have 15 supplementary tables and contain a lot of information and seems to be the main results, especially you put all your texts in here.

4. Discussion

Discussion section also need to rearranged. You have some results and conclusion stated in this section. Discussion is a section where you compare your work to other works and analysis the similarity and differences.

Line 294-295: affected maize initial growth, depending in order on MPEO dose,...

Line 310: delete “,”

Line 316-318: with your logical,  are you saying the MPEO in vermiculite will be more easily leached out than those two soils. Then the MPEO in vermiculite should be less available (because it contains less) to the plants. This deduction is different than what you say here.

Line 324: observed by Synowiec, A. et al….

Line 332: please add the author's name after "by..." apply the same change to the rest of the manuscript

Line 349: does vermiculite maintain higher temperature than soil?

Line 349-350: This sentence is in contrary to what you said before Line 317.

Line 352-363: This is not discussion. This should be in the result section. In the discussion section, you should compare your results with other studies and analysis what the similarities and differences and explain…

Line 363: “similarly..”

Line 367-370: Are those conclusions?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your detailed review.

We made all the changes you asked for:

1. we tried to simplify the text and data. However, we decided to leave all the tables as the supplementary material, as they would increase the manuscript largely. We think that in this way they will be easily available for the reader.
2. We adopted all the editing changes you suggested all over the manuscript, and mark all the changes in red color.
3. We added the subsections to the Material and Methods part
4. We explained the performed pot experiments in a more clear way (please refer to the lines 118-125
5. We converted soil data into table 1.
6. we added a more detailed description of measurements, that we performed. (paragraph 2.3)
7. We rearranged and supplemented Figure 1 with additional information, to make it more clear to the Reader
8. We organized the description of the Results section, and corrected the contradictory statements, regarding germination and growth in vermiculite
9.  We changed the description of statistical analyses to be consistent with the description of the results (lines 147-149)
10. We improved Discussion part and conclusions part (please see the red changes).
11. We also added literature citations to make the discussion more sound (please see the red changes in discussion and references)

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors accepted most of suggested comments.

Unfortunately before manuscript publishing need  few small correction. Remarks listed below.

Line 61. Please correct units and -2 write as superscript ^-2.

Please check units notation at lines 232, 261, 306, 360.

Figure 1. Dose of MPEO was given in wrong units. Instead ^-2 please write ^-1.

Author Response

Dear Editor,

 

Thank you for your detailed analysis of the manuscript.

We have found and changed all the formatting issues you pointed out (Line 61, 232, 261, 306, 360, X axis in Figure 1).

Wth kind regards,

The authors

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper has been well revised and could be published with current format.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your comment.

With kind regards,

the authors.