Incidence and Distribution of Four Viruses Causing Diverse Mosaic Diseases of Sugarcane in China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Please review the references one more time. Reference style should be consistent
Author Response
We have doubly checked and unified the reference format.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript entitled “Incidence and distribution of four viruses causing diverse mosaic diseases of sugarcane in China” by He and colleagues depicts the status of four important viruses in 8 provinces in China. The authors performed a series of surveys to collect sugarcane material and provided us with useful information on the incidence and spread of these viruses in China.
In general, I found the work satisfying and I offer few minor comments for revision below. There is only one major point I need to stress their attention to. The authors made a lot of effort to clone and sequence the obtained amplicons from these four viruses, and they present only a fragment of this work in Figure 2. It would be useful the results to be presented in an additional form, such as a phylogenetic tree for example, in order to see the relationships of these isolates and their evolution. This means that extra parts (text and figure) need to be added to materials and methods, results and discussion as well. I see that MaYMV isolates show high conservation in the selected region (99.2-99.6% nt identity), but the other 3 show higher genetic variability. I am sure that the authors may provide probable scenarios for these results too. Conclusively, the authors collected 901 samples from 8 provinces, thus it would be a miss not to see the genetic information behind these isolates. I strongly believe that the revised version will significantly improve the quality of the manuscript and reward the authors for all this work. Thus, my recommendation is acceptance with major revision.
Minor comments
Introduction
First paragraph
“Java”: which country?
“Sugarcane mosaic disease can reduce..”
Second paragraph
You state that “Mosaic symptoms in sugarcane are currently associated with numerous diseases”, and then you mention four of them. The fifth disease you mention in the next sentence, does it exhibit different symptoms from the other four? And was MaYMV associated with the disease?
Delete “.” after reference [9]
Delete underlines from “mosaic”, “streak mosaic”, “mild mosaic” and “striate mosaic”
Third paragraph
I would prefer “causal agent” rather than “causal virus”
“various SCMV strains”
Results
Paragraph 3.3
You may add how many samples were found negative in all 4 viruses. I saw that in the discussion part but it should be also mentioned in the results.
Paragraph 3.4
replace “some samples” with “ a few samples” or “few samples” depending on the case
Table 2. I believe there is no need for these numbers “(1),(2),(3),(4)”, maybe you should replace them with the viruses, as it would be more understandable by the readers. Moreover, I believe that few columns are omitted from the table (maybe the results from triple infection?)
Author Response
The manuscript entitled “Incidence and distribution of four viruses causing diverse mosaic diseases of sugarcane in China” by He and colleagues depicts the status of four important viruses in 8 provinces in China. The authors performed a series of surveys to collect sugarcane material and provided us with useful information on the incidence and spread of these viruses in China.
In general, I found the work satisfying and I offer few minor comments for revision below. There is only one major point I need to stress their attention to. The authors made a lot of effort to clone and sequence the obtained amplicons from these four viruses, and they present only a fragment of this work in Figure 2. It would be useful the results to be presented in an additional form, such as a phylogenetic tree for example, in order to see the relationships of these isolates and their evolution. This means that extra parts (text and figure) need to be added to materials and methods, results and discussion as well. I see that MaYMV isolates show high conservation in the selected region (99.2-99.6% nt identity), but the other 3 show higher genetic variability. I am sure that the authors may provide probable scenarios for these results too. Conclusively, the authors collected 901 samples from 8 provinces, thus it would be a miss not to see the genetic information behind these isolates. I strongly believe that the revised version will significantly improve the quality of the manuscript and reward the authors for all this work. Thus, my recommendation is acceptance with major revision.
Reply: Thank you so much for your suggestions. We agree with your opinion, but this current manuscript just focuses on the prevalence of mosaic disease caused by four viruses. We have provided with sequence information of fragments amplified by RT-PCR for these viruses in supplemental Table 3. The phylogenetic analysis among different viruses might be conducted in another manuscript.
Minor comments
Introduction
First paragraph
“Java”: which country?
Reply: We revised “Java” as “Java, Indonesia,”.
“Sugarcane mosaic disease can reduce..”
Reply: We added the “disease” after “mosaic”.
Second paragraph
You state that “Mosaic symptoms in sugarcane are currently associated with numerous diseases”, and then you mention four of them. The fifth disease you mention in the next sentence, does it exhibit different symptoms from the other four? And was MaYMV associated with the disease?
Reply: We described mosaic diseases in two sentences because the MaYMV associated with mosaic symptoms in sugarcane was recently reported (Sun et al., 2019 & 2021; Nithya et al., 2021). Mosaic and foliar yellowing symptoms occurred in maize (Chen et al., 2016), while these typical symptoms were also present in sugarcane whereas these samples were coinfected by MaYMV and other viruses such as SCMV, SCSMV, SCMMV, and SrMV (Sun et al., 2019 & 2021). In practice, it is hard to separate mosaic diseases in sugarcane based on symptoms caused by each virus (SCMV, SCSMV, SCMMV, SrMV, and MaYMV) because similar symptom usually presents in sugarcane leaves even if they were infected by different viruses. We added this information in this section.
Delete “.” after reference [9]
Reply: Revised as you required.
Delete underlines from “mosaic”, “streak mosaic”, “mild mosaic” and “striate mosaic”
Reply: Revised as you required.
Third paragraph
I would prefer “causal agent” rather than “causal virus”.
Reply: Revised as you required.
“various SCMV strains”
Reply: Revised ““various SCMV trains” as ““various SCMV strains”.
Results
Paragraph 3.3
You may add how many samples were found negative in all 4 viruses. I saw that in the discussion part but it should be also mentioned in the results.
Reply: We added the sentence as “170 were not infected with any of four viruses”.
Paragraph 3.4
replace “some samples” with “ a few samples” or “few samples” depending on the case.
Reply: “some samples” is Ok because different numbers of positive samples in different cases in a sentence.
Table 2. I believe there is no need for these numbers “(1),(2),(3),(4)”, maybe you should replace them with the viruses, as it would be more understandable by the readers. Moreover, I believe that few columns are omitted from the table (maybe the results from triple infection?)
Reply: We prefer to keep the current shape of this table.
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript describes systematic and country-wide study for identification and distribution of sugarcane viruses causing mosaic diseases in China. The authors revealed the regional prevalence and status of single or mixed-infection for the four major viruses causing sugarcane mosaics. It is concisely described and contains new information that deserve for publication.
The following minor points can be improved.
- Page 4, Figure 2 legend, line 3; “N_C004035” will be “NC_004035”.
- Page 6, in 3.4. line 6; “three” viruses should be “two” viruses.
- Page 6, Table 2; There seems to be some disorders in the strings of characters in the top column such as “No. of samples tested”, “No infection by any four viruses”, and “Single infection by any four viruses”. Please reconfirm.
- Page 8, line 14; The authors stated that “None of the four viruses were detected in a minority of leaf samples (19%)”, but I think 19% is not just a minority. Rather, I think it is extremely important that 19% of the samples were free from all the four viruses tested despite they exhibited mosaic symptoms.
Author Response
The manuscript describes systematic and country-wide study for identification and distribution of sugarcane viruses causing mosaic diseases in China. The authors revealed the regional prevalence and status of single or mixed-infection for the four major viruses causing sugarcane mosaics. It is concisely described and contains new information that deserve for publication.
The following minor points can be improved.
- Page 4, Figure 2 legend, line 3; “N_C004035” will be “NC_004035”.
Reply: Revised as you required.
- Page 6, in 3.4. line 6; “three” viruses should be “two” viruses.
Reply: “three” was revised as “two”.
- Page 6, Table 2; There seems to be some disorders in the strings of characters in the top column such as “No. of samples tested”, “No infection by any four viruses”, and “Single infection by any four viruses”. Please reconfirm.
Reply: We have unified the format based on the instruction of this journal.
- Page 8, line 14; The authors stated that “None of the four viruses were detected in a minority of leaf samples (19%)”, but I think 19% is not just a minority. Rather, I think it is extremely important that 19% of the samples were free from all the four viruses tested despite they exhibited mosaic symptoms.
Reply: “a minority of” was revised as “some”. I agree with you that these samples (19%) were extremely important. Other viruses would infect these samples.
Reviewer 4 Report
A few edition changes are recommended:
- Change: “Information for leaf samples...” for “Origin of the samples…” in the legend of Table S1.
- Remove: “Four” in the legend of Table S2.
- Change: “with yellow background” for “highlighted in yellow” in the legend of Table S3.
Author Response
A few edition changes are recommended:
- Change: “Information for leaf samples...” for “Origin of the samples…” in the legend of Table S1.
Reply: Revised as you required.
- Remove: “Four” in the legend of Table S2.
Reply: Revised as you required.
- Change: “with yellow background” for “highlighted in yellow” in the legend of Table S3.
Reply: Revised as you required.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper entitled "Incidence and distribution of four viruses causing diverse mosaic diseases of sugarcane in China" by He and colleagues was revised according to the suggestion lines. I find the final manuscript version satisfying and ready for acceptance in the present form.
