Development of New Rice (Oryza. sativa L.) Breeding Lines through Marker-Assisted Introgression and Pyramiding of Brown Planthopper, Blast, Bacterial Leaf Blight Resistance, and Aroma Genes
, Xinying Guo 1,2, Xixi Ma 1,2, Liang Luo 1,2, Yaoyu Fang 1,2, Neng Zhao 1,2, Yue Han 1,2, Zheng Wei 1,2, Fang Liu 1,2, Baoxiang Qin 1,2 and Rongbai Li 1,2,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper of Wang et al. presented a study on the development of breeding lines with pyramided QTL related to biotic stresses and grain quality. The paper is not novel as there are many introgression studies that have been conducted in the past. However, the development of the pyramided lines is necessary for our evolving agronomic environments. My primary concerns here are 1. The authors did not include the recurrent parent background selection of the lines. Could you explain why? 2. How would you prove that the introgressed genes are the main cause of improved resistance? 3. Some resistance genes can cause linkage drag (i.e. Pi21 is linked to poor grain), did the authors review the possibility of the introgressed genes being related to poor grain quality.
I have a lot of corrections in the manuscript. I cannot type it here one by one so I am attaching a pdf file with comments. You can use adobe software to see the comments and corrections. Also, I wasn't able to check the supplementary materials mentioned in the text as the authors did not include them.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors conducted the introgression and pyramiding analyses of brown planthopper (BPH), blast, bacterial leaf blight (BLB) resistance and aroma genes into rice maintainers and restorers through conventional crossing breeding and with marker-assisted selection (MAS) breeding method. The authors have developed a total of 74 improved lines with genes for BPH, blast, BLB resistance and aroma. The authors concluded the importance of these lines in rice breeding.
I believe that the authors have provided sufficient background with the methodologies explained well, presented the results with appropriate tables and figures, and withdrawn appropriate conclusions based on available data. I believe that overall, the manuscript is written well, though there are quite some grammatical and editorials errors throughout the entire manuscript. I have listed some of them here (but again, there are more throughout the entire manuscript) for the authors to consider if a revision is required by the editor:
Lines 112-118, please make it consistent and keep the past tense in this paragraph. This is also the problem found in many other places throughout the entire manuscript.
Figure 1, please explain F5 and F6; please separate the time and the location with a “,”
Line 248, replace “got with” with “contained”
Line 251, replace “got” with “with”
Figure 2, replace “Evaluation” with “evaluation” and explain what “ILs” represents
Table 2, please explain what “ILs” represents.
Lines 447-458, this paragraph may be established as a new section “Conclusions”
Author Response
I greatly appreciate to reviewer and editor, for the comments and corrections.
The errors have been corrected one by one according to the suggestions. In addition, some more grammatical and editorials errors have been corrected and an improvement for English language have been conducted.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have sufficiently answered all my questions and addressed the necessary corrections in the manuscript.
