Exogenous Application of GABA Alleviates Alkali Damage in Alfalfa by Increasing the Activities of Antioxidant Enzymes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript presented by the authors deals with an interesting topic, however, it requires numerous corrections.

1. Title is too long.

2. The manuscript looks as if someone has made a correction on it that has not been fully corrected. You can find in it, unnecessary at this stage, deletions, underlines, words marked in color or marked in color, i.e. the name of the first author. This should be removed.

3. I suggest the authors read the manuscript carefully in order to eliminate minor punctuation errors.

4. What does "0" mean, appearing from time to time in the text in individual chapters.

5. There is no chapter in the methodology on how the statistical analysis was performed, the results of which are later visible.

6. The font should be standardized throughout the article. References are written in a different font, and the rest of the manuscript is written in a different font.

7. The method of citing individual articles in the References chapter should be standardized.

8. There is a chapter on references in the manuscript, but there is virtually no quotation in the article and it should definitely be supplemented. Statements appearing in the text, for example, "Authors of certain studies" without specifying the authors, are unacceptable in such class of articles.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper of Li and co-workers spotlighted the role, or at least the effect, of exogenous GABA application in mitigate alkali damage in alfalfa plants. In a first view, the manuscript seemingly holds a lot of merit. Notwithstanding, after a critical reading I have noticed that major concerning about the paper it is that main idea it is not well presented due to english style and writting subpar. Thus, the reading and revision process became a hard task.

And so, please see all comment bellow which the authors must carefully check:

1. Introduction, indeed, seems a poor discussion which states the role of GABA in plant stress response. This section do not present the state-of-art of GABA effect in the tolerance to Alkali stress either the role this for alfalfa biology. There are no connection among paragraph or even among sentences.

2. it is no clear what it is the main manuscript propose. In abstract section claim the GABA´s role in alkalin stress althought at the end od introduction the aim is provide the role of GABA in carbon metabolism.

3. Refereces are not included. They state as 0

4.  In teh introduction: How Do alkalin stress induce water shortage? What means physiological drought.

5.  M&M: all the section (exception 2.5) must be rewritten for a better comprehension concerning methodology.

6. it´s trivial, but important aware how long plant tissue was dried in order to obtain DW.

7.  For GAD activity determination. Why did the author use only 0, 1 and 3 days?

8. Please adjust graphic axis for english (see Suppl material).

9. Please, add new section with statistical analysis

10.  add primer sequence in a new

11. Figures must appear after results description.

12.  All legend must be rewritten in order to let them more self understandable.

13. Fig1A: 0.9% or 90%

14.   better describe results claiming which figures are associated with .

15. Major figures do no show statistical analysis. This is major error considering that I could follow the results stated without a statistical support.

15. Discussion is to long, but hard to follow since the lack of statistical supoprt of the results.

Author Response

Please see the attachmen

Author Response File: Author Response.docx