Growing Environment and Heat Treatment Effects on Intra- and Interspecific Pollination in Chile Pepper (Capsicum spp.)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The current study entitled “Growing environment and heat treatment effects on intra- and interspecific pollination in chile pepper (Capsicum sp.)” is a good study. The topic is very interesting and needs more and more scientific attention.

Major

Abstract

• A systematic abstract must have an introduction, problem statement, material and methods, quantitative results and conclusive conclusion. However, no introduction of the problem statement and selection of strategy is provided in the abstract. Please elaborate that in 1-2 lines.
• No quantitative data is provided in the abstract. Provide some quantitative data (percentage increase or decrease) of studied parameters. Without quantitative data, how a conclusive conclusion can be provided?
• Avoid writing long sentences. i.e., We identified significant associations between in vitro pollen treatment and pollination success rate during summer and winter seasons, and found that heat treatment was a greater contributor to variability than growing environment, which validates previous reports on the use fulness of studying pollen in vitro in selection for heat tolerance.
• Potential benefits of this research are provided at the end of the abstract. Please provide future prospective in a single line.
• Avoid using title words as keywords, i.e., heat tolerance.

Introduction

• Introduction flow must follow the trend of the title. The author should explain the growing environment, then heat treatment, followed by intra- and interspecific pollination in chile pepper. After that, give a practical problem i.e., pollination in chile pepper which is identified and the aims of the study.
• Give a clear-cut statement about the aims/objectives of the study at the end of the introduction. Also, give the target audience who will benefit from this research.
• The objective must be SMART, i.e., (S - Specific, M - Measurable, A - Achievable, R - Realistic, T – Time-bound).

Material and Methods

• No description of statistical analysis is provided. In detail explain ANOVA and comparison text. What was the probability level? Only Pearson correlation is not sufficient.

Results

• Add the maximum change in terms of increase or decrease among attributes. It will help to support the conclusive conclusion.
• Mentioned about significant or non-significant changes

Discussion

• The discussion part is very descriptive. Please give a precise and mechanistic discussion. Rather than comparing your results with other studies, it is better to elaborate on the mechanism behind that.

Conclusion

• A systematic conclusion is missing. It must contain the results as per objectives. Mentioned either result favor your hypothesis or reject it. What are potential benefits for which audience—your recommendation with future prospects for further research work. There is no need to explain your results in the conclusion.

 

Minor

The English language needs extensive editing.

Author Response

The current study entitled “Growing environment and heat treatment effects on intra- and interspecific pollination in chile pepper (Capsicum sp.)” is a good study. The topic is very interesting and needs more and more scientific attention.

No change was made here as this comment does not require changes.

Major

Abstract

• A systematic abstract must have an introduction, problem statement, material and methods, quantitative results and conclusive conclusion. However, no introduction of the problem statement and selection of strategy is provided in the abstract. Please elaborate that in 1-2 lines.

The abstract has been edited

 

• No quantitative data is provided in the abstract. Provide some quantitative data (percentage increase or decrease) of studied parameters. Without quantitative data, how a conclusive conclusion can be provided?

This is a personal style difference. The use of quantitate data in the abstract is not required for publication. If readers wish to see quantitative data, they can scroll down to the results section as this is an open access journal. Linked below are papers in a very recent issue (11[4]) of Agronomy (one studying Capsicum and one on the effect of low temperatures on soybean, among others) without quantitative data in the abstract

 https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11040805

 https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11040811 

 https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11040803

 https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11040800

 

• Avoid writing long sentences. i.e., We identified significant associations between in vitro pollen treatment and pollination success rate during summer and winter seasons, and found that heat treatment was a greater contributor to variability than growing environment, which validates previous reports on the use fulness of studying pollen in vitro in selection for heat tolerance.

This sentence was divided into two sentences

• Potential benefits of this research are provided at the end of the abstract. Please provide future prospective in a single line.

 

The following sentence is in the abstract, stating the future perspectives.

This work provides a basis for future research in exploring additional heat tolerance components as well as for the development of phenotyping assays for pollen or other floral traits.

 

 

• Avoid using title words as keywords, i.e., heat tolerance.

Heat tolerance is not in the title, and therefore no change was made

Introduction

• Introduction flow must follow the trend of the title. The author should explain the growing environment, then heat treatment, followed by intra- and interspecific pollination in chile pepper. After that, give a practical problem i.e., pollination in chile pepper which is identified and the aims of the study.

This is a difference in style and does not affect the presentation of our work. To this end, with the exception of a few sentences at the beginning of the first paragraph introducing the crop and importance, our introduction follows the title trend.

The title is:

Growing environment and heat treatment effects on intra- and interspecific pollination in chile pepper (Capsicum sp.)

The first paragraph discussing the growing environment and the second paragraph addresses the proper tissues for heat treatment. We then discuss the use of wild relatives, which is related to the intra and interspecific crossability.  The last paragraph in the introduction discusses the research question (practical problem). Our style for an introduction is to go from broad to narrow, and while neither style is wrong insisting that every paper adhere to one style of another will

 

• Give a clear-cut statement about the aims/objectives of the study at the end of the introduction. Also, give the target audience who will benefit from this research.

This was done.

 

• The objective must be SMART, i.e., (S - Specific, M - Measurable, A - Achievable, R - Realistic, T – Time-bound).

We are not sure which of these points is not met by our current objectives. Our current objectives seem to meet all of these requirements.

Material and Methods

• No description of statistical analysis is provided. In detail explain ANOVA and comparison text. What was the probability level? Only Pearson correlation is not sufficient.

Additional information, including the alpha value, were included in the materials and methods.

Results

• Add the maximum change in terms of increase or decrease among attributes. It will help to support the conclusive conclusion.

 

A paragraph was added presenting the greatest and smallest differences in pollination success rates between seasons and treatments.

 

• Mentioned about significant or non-significant changes

With the exception of paragraph added on the differences in pollination success rates between seasons and treatments, we only present significant results.

Discussion

• The discussion part is very descriptive. Please give a precise and mechanistic discussion. Rather than comparing your results with other studies, it is better to elaborate on the mechanism behind that.

The discussion has been completely rewritten.

Conclusion

• A systematic conclusion is missing. It must contain the results as per objectives. Mentioned either result favor your hypothesis or reject it. What are potential benefits for which audience—your recommendation with future prospects for further research work. There is no need to explain your results in the conclusion.

It is not common to add target audience in conclusions and therefore this was not done. We did edit the conclusion to add more results related to our hypothesis.

Minor

The English language needs extensive editing.

This comment contradicts reviewer 2. However, we have thoroughly revised the manuscript

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments:

In general, this manuscript has a valuable topic. The manuscript is well written except for minor English language check required. The experimental design is adequate. There are some minor comments.

• The topic is scientific sounds.
• The manuscript is fairly written just organization and support to the discussion is needed.
• The topic is not new but at the same time it is not well studied.
• I worked with pollination in citrus, and I conducted viability and germination experiments and I understand how difficult to get data from both in vitro and field work in this area. Therefore, I value the work done in this paper.

Question 1:

The main question is there is a relationship between growing environment and heat treatment and interspecific pollination, and the results showed that there is a relationship.

The author failed to build a strong discussion Yes, but the results support his hypothesis, the author just need to rewrite the discussion section. It is highly recommended to combine the results and Discussion in one section because he put details in the results sections should be in the discussion. It the author relate to the results in his discussion, he will raise a strong argument.

question 2

To me I think the research not original but very important to the field science there is not a lot of work on the effect of environmental conditions and pollination efficiency. It seems easy topic but unfortunately it is not well addressed by the researchers.

Question 3

To me the text was easy to understand. The only problem I had was with the discussion, but this was not due to the language it was due to the poor discussion.

Question 4 (the conclusion)

I think this section was of, again the problem is in the discussion part. If the author provided a strong discussion this will lead to a strong presentation to the data and highlights the main evidence in this work.

Detailed comments:

Abstract:

-This section is missing the direct and clear aim. Please state the aim of the study clearly.

-In general, Please avoid using personal pronouns such as we, our results, and apply this rule throughout the manuscript (-Line 14 : we identified).

Discussion:

-Line 210-254: This part has long paragraph with too long sentences. Please use short sentences with the suitable citations.

-Please rewrite this section and relate to the data in tables and figures carefully with a comparison to the previous studies.

I suggest combining the results section with this section in one section (Results and Discussion).

 

Author Response

General comments:

• In general, this manuscript has a valuable topic. The manuscript is well written except for minor English language check required. The experimental design is adequate. There are some minor comments.

We have thoroughly revised the entire manuscript.

• The topic is scientific sounds.

No change was made, as none are required

• The manuscript is fairly written just organization and support to the discussion is needed.

We have extensively revised the discussion section.

• The topic is not new but at the same time it is not well studied.

This comment does not require changes.

• I worked with pollination in citrus, and I conducted viability and germination experiments and I understand how difficult to get data from both in vitroand field work in this area. Therefore, I value the work done in this paper.

No change was made, because none were required.

Question 1:

The main question is there is a relationship between growing environment and heat treatment and interspecific pollination, and the results showed that there is a relationship.

No change was made

The author failed to build a strong discussion Yes, but the results support his hypothesis, the author just need to rewrite the discussion section. It is highly recommended to combine the results and Discussion in one section because he put details in the results sections should be in the discussion. It the author relate to the results in his discussion, he will raise a strong argument.

We have rewritten the discussion section to better relate our findings to previously reported reports; however, we did not combine the results and discussion section. It is our understanding that agronomy prefers these sections be separate in their publications.

question 2

To me I think the research not original but very important to the field science there is not a lot of work on the effect of environmental conditions and pollination efficiency. It seems easy topic but unfortunately it is not well addressed by the researchers.

To the best of our knowledge, no work has been previously conducted to correlate in vitro pollen assays to pollination. In theory this is an easy study, but it is extremely time consuming and laborious to conduct this type of work. In total we made nearly 3,000 hybridizations – many of which included wild species with small flowers that are difficult to emasculate, which is exactly why this work has not been done before, at least in a systematic manner.  

Our discussion included the following sentences under the first review.

Therefore, using pollen traits as an indicator of heat tolerance has been reported to be an effective technique and the development of in vitro assays to assess pollen response to heat stress have been developed [17, 18, 21]. However, the relationship between the in vitro assays for pollen viability, germination and tube length and actual pollination success rate has not been previously determined.

Question 3

To me the text was easy to understand. The only problem I had was with the discussion, but this was not due to the language it was due to the poor discussion.

The discussion section has been revised to better relate our findings to those of previous findings.

Question 4 (the conclusion)

I think this section was of, again the problem is in the discussion part. If the author provided a strong discussion this will lead to a strong presentation to the data and highlights the main evidence in this work.

The discussion section has been revised to better relate our findings to those of previous findings.

Detailed comments:

Abstract:

-This section is missing the direct and clear aim. Please state the aim of the study clearly.

The objectives of this study were added to the abstract.

-In general, Please avoid using personal pronouns such as we, our results, and apply this rule throughout the manuscript (-Line 14 : we identified).

We removed personal pronouns throughout the manuscript

Discussion:

-Line 210-254: This part has long paragraph with too long sentences. Please use short sentences with the suitable citations.

We have heavily revised the discussion section, made sentences shorts and split paragraphs.

-Please rewrite this section and relate to the data in tables and figures carefully with a comparison to the previous studies.

This section has been heavily revised to include more comparisons between our results and previous studies, although we cannot find much in the literature on making pollinations using heat treated pollen to validate in vitro bioassays. Most of the work on heat treated pollen is to induce sterility.  

I suggest combining the results section with this section in one section (Results and Discussion).

This was not done. Combining results and discussion is a personal style preference and the majority of manuscript accepted by agronomy have separate sections.

Reviewer 3 Report

Paper "Growing environment and heat treatment effects on intra- and interspecific pollination in chile pepper (Capsicum sp.)" is very interesting and important but needs revision..

"2. Materials and Methods": lack of "Statistical analysis" sub-section, and desctiption of statistical methods used in this paper is very poor.
Line 163: Re-write sentence "The two-way interaction of season by heat treatment..."
Table 2 is incomplet. Table needs mean squares and the number of degrees of freedom for all source of variations.
Table 3: How correlation coefficients were calculated on the basis of mean values or for all data?

Paper needs major revision.

Author Response

• Paper "Growing environment and heat treatment effects on intra- and interspecific pollination in chile pepper (Capsicum sp.)" is very interesting and important but needs revision..

No change was made based on this statement

• "2. Materials and Methods": lack of "Statistical analysis" sub-section, and desctiption of statistical methods used in this paper is very poor.

We have added more information in the statistical analysis section.

• Line 163: Re-write sentence "The two-way interaction of season by heat treatment..."

We have revised this sentence.

• Table 2 is incomplet. Table needs mean squares and the number of degrees of freedom for all source of variations.

Mean squares and F-values are different ways of describing similar things. The authors prefer F-values because they are the ratios of mean squares of the two groups, allowing us to better determine magnitude of contribution to variations. However, we added the requested values to Table 2.

• Table 3: How correlation coefficients were calculated on the basis of mean values or for all data?

We have described how the correlations were calculated in the materials and methods section

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors

Majority of comments are ignored and didn't incorporate. That's why I have no choice but to reject manuscript. Editor in cheif and handling editors can sent manuscript to any other reviwer.

Regards

Author Response

Extensive edits were made when substantive changes were suggested. In fact, new paragraphs were added to the results and discussion sections based on the first review by Reviewer 1. However, changes based on differences in style were generally not made. The roles of reviewers and authors are different—a reviewer should ensure the manuscript is technically sounds, novel, and a useful contribution to the literature, in addition to ensuring that the presentation of the data is done in a meaningful way. However, the authors have the primary influence on the way the data are presented, as the presenters. Given the manuscript adheres to the requirements of the Journal, the writing style is the privilege of the authors.

Reviewer 3 Report

Table 2 needs mean squares for residual!

Author Response

Table 2 needs mean squares for residual!

This has been done.