Potential of Native Trichoderma Strains as Antagonists for the Control of Fungal Wood Pathologies in Young Grapevine Plants

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors. After reading your work that I am reviewing, I have no substantive comments. Only minor punctuation errors, which I marked on the manuscript, which I am sending attached. The work is written very well. The introduction to the research and the methodical part of the work were correctly written. The results are well described and discussed in the "discussion" section. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The minor punctuation errors indicated by the Reviewer have been corrected in the revised version of the manuscript

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript “Potential of Native Trichoderma Strains as Antagonists for the Control of Fungal Wood Pathologies in Young Grapevine Plants”, provides useful information for inhibition of fungal pathogens Neofusicoccum parvum and Rhizoctonia solani by using Trichoderma harzianum strains in grape plants.

Author Response

We thank the Reviewer for his positive feedback.

Reviewer 3 Report

Manuscript "agronomy-1555540" describes the potential of Trichoderma strains for the control of grapevine diseases caused by N. parvum and R. solani. Research is well designed and executed, results are critically discussed and overall authors provide meaningful research on evaluating the effect of potential biological control agents against these diseases. 

My only suggestion to the authors is to provide mean separation statistics to all treatment comparisons for tested isolates (and non partially, as shown in tables 2 to 8). 

Something that isn’t clear to me in table 5 is why the authors present besides total length necrosis,  the lower necrosis as well. What is the purpose of that? Could you explain or exclude it?

Author Response

My only suggestion to the authors is to provide mean separation statistics to all treatment comparisons for tested isolates (and non partially, as shown in tables 2 to 8).

Response: Mean separation statistics have now been indicated in all cases (we had initially indicated them only when statistically significant differences were found). Tables 3, 4, 5 and 6 have been updated according to the Reviewer’s suggestion.

 

Something that isn’t clear to me in table 5 is why the authors present besides total length necrosis, the lower necrosis as well. What is the purpose of that? Could you explain or exclude it?

Response: Lower necrosis lengths were also indicated in this particular case because statistically significant differences were detected for T. harzianum isolate 2 when the lower necrosis data was analyzed separately (and such differences were not detected for the total necrosis length values). The text has been modified accordingly to clarify this point: “It was found that the only statistically significant differences in total necrosis values corresponded to those bioassays in which T. harzianum isolate 4 was employed. Nonetheless, when lower necrosis lengths were separately analyzed, statistically significant differences were also detected for T. harzianum isolate 2. […]”

Author Response File: Author Response.doc