Effect of Climatic Conditions Caused by Seasons on Maize Yield, Kernel Filling and Weight in Central China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The present research article entitled “Effect of variation in climatic conditions by seasons on maize yield, kernel filling, and weight in central China" mainly focused on the productivity parameters of the different climatic variables. The present experiment is well presented, and the results are significant for the agro-farming/ agro-industrial systems. The authors are requested to attend to the following matters and submit revised manuscript.
· The MS title should be changed/ modify
· Abstract needs improvement
· Line 45-46: Plz incorporate recent reference
· Line 58-59: Authors write, “Many studies……….. and add only 2 references [7,8]. Add more ref. or revise the sentence
· Line 60-61: Need revision
· Line 98: Demonstration year is right, 2012 to 2013? Plz check. If right, why do authors publish after 9 years, any specific reason behind this?
· Line 154: Figure 1, Axis-X and Y lettering is not clear, plz improve
· Results section needs improvement, some sentences meaning not clear
· Line 245: Plz check the sub-heading language error
· Line 318: Plz correct as Correlation coefficients significant at*=p <0.05, **= p<0.01,
· Discussion and conclusion need improvement
· The manuscript abounds with grammatical errors, which should be attended to.
After minor revision, the manuscript can be acceptable for publication in the Agronomy journal.
Author Response
Reviewer #1: Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The present research article entitled “Effect of variation in climatic conditions by seasons on maize yield, kernel filling, and weight in central China" mainly focused on the productivity parameters of the different climatic variables. The present experiment is well presented, and the results are significant for the agro-farming/ agro-industrial systems. The authors are requested to attend to the following matters and submit revised manuscript.
----Response (R): We highly appreciate the reviewer’s insightful comments and suggestions and have revised our manuscript accordingly (see below).
The MS title should be changed/ modify.
----R: Thanks for your helpful suggestion. We have modified the manuscript (MS) title. Please see Page 1 Lines 1-2 of the revised manuscript with changes marked as described below.
“Effect of climatic conditions caused by seasons on maize yield, kernel filling and weight in central China”
Line 45-46: Plz incorporate recent reference.
----R: Thanks for your suggestions. We have added reference as below:
[1] FAO. 2020, https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL/visualize.
Please see Page 2 Line 78 of the revised manuscript with changes marked as below.
“Maize (Zea mays L.) is one of the most important crops in China, accounting for 20.43% and 22.42% of the world’s area and food production in 2020, respectively [1].”
Meanwhile, it was already listed in References part. Please see Pages 19 Lines 2029 of the revised manuscript with changes marked.
Line 58-59: Authors write, “Many studies……….. and add only 2 references [7,8]. Add more ref. or revise the sentence.
----R: Thanks for the suggestion. We are sorry for the unclear and inaccurate descriptions in our previous manuscript.
In the previous version, the sentence “Many studies……….. duration and KW[7,8]” was a concluding sentence, so the latter reference [9]to [13] were to extened for the idea. We have revised related description. Please see Pages 2 Lines 92-94 of the revised manuscript with changes marked as described below.
“Many studies have suggested that temperature and growing degree days (GDD) are the main climatic factor influencing the maize phenological development duration and KW[4,6,12-14]”
Line 60-61: Need revision.
----R: Thanks for pointing out this problem. We are very sorry for the inaccurate description in our previous manuscript. We have revised related description. Please see Pages 2 Lines 94-95 of the revised manuscript with changes marked as described below.
“The optimum T for mid-summer maize growth and kernel filling were 21–27°C and 27–32°C, respectively[14,15]”
Line 98: Demonstration year is right, 2012 to 2013? Plz check. If right, why do authors publish after 9 years, any specific reason behind this?
----R: Thanks for your attention. This MS is a part of the author’s PhD thesis. After the author workingin the university there were some teaching and filed research load to do, and had no enough time to written this MS, and so this MS were written after 9 years. As your attention, the author will publish other MSs as soon as possible with the filed experiment finished in future.
Line 154: Figure 1, Axis-X and Y lettering is not clear, plz improve.
----R: Thanks for your valuable suggestion. We have modified Fig. 1 following the comment.
Results section needs improvement, some sentences meaning not clear.
----R: Thanks for constructive comments and suggestions. We are sorry for the unclear presentation of the Results in our previous manuscript. We have revised related description in the Results section. Please see the revised manuscript with changes marked.
Line 245: Plz check the sub-heading language error.
----R: Thanks for your suggestion. We are sorry for the unclear presentation of the sub-heading in our previous manuscript. We have revised the sub-heading. Please see Page 10 Line 785 of the revised manuscript with changes marked as described below.
“Maize Kernel Filling Characteristic Parameter”.
Besides, we have checked other sub-headings thoroughly.
Line 318: Plz correct as Correlation coefficients significant at*=p <0.05, **= p<0.01.
----R: Thanks for your valuable suggestion. We have revised the text to avoid confusion. Please see Page 12 Line 1531 of the revised manuscript with changes marked as described below. In addition, we have revised the text of other sections in response to your comments.
Discussion and conclusion need improvement.
----R: Thanks for constructive comments and suggestions. We are sorry for the unclear presentation of the Discussion and Conclusion in our previous manuscript. We have revised the Discussion and Conclusion. Please see in the the revised manuscript with changes marked.
The manuscript abounds with grammatical errors, which should be attended to. After minor revision, the manuscript can be acceptable for publication in the Agronomy journal.
----R: Thanks for your suggestions! We have asked a foreign student help us to check the manuscript again and done some revision in each part of the Ms.
Other changes: We do not list other changes here but have marked them in red in the revised manuscript.
In all, the comments of editor and reviewers are all helpful to us, and we have revised the paper point by point. Thanks for your insightful comments.
We look forward to hearing from your responses at your earliest convenience.
Best wishes,
Junzhu Ge
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript aims to study the ‘Effect of variation in climatic conditions by seasons on maize yield, kernel filling and weight in central China’. There are some comments that should be taken into account by authors, which I believe are significant and important aspects that need to be thoroughly addressed in authors revision.
The main concern is:
Abstract:
(1) The main results that were obtained to conclude their conclusion is not presented well in the abstract. This part needs to be completely re-written.
(2) Abbreviations should be rechecked to follow the standard format, please revise this issue in the whole ms.
Introduction:
(3) There is a lack of information about what is new. Authors should cited the newest previous work by adding new references (2019-2022).
Results:
(4) Please explain all abbreviations in legend of tables and figures. Remember that tables and figures must be self-explanatory. That is, all statistics and abbreviations used must be clearly explained.
(5) Please add standard deviations or standard errors (±SE or ±SD) for values in Table 4, letters are not enough.
(6) In Figures 2 & 3, they added SD or SE. Authors should define what bare are mean?
Discussion
(7) The summary for the current study is not enough, especially for the Discussion. Some papers should be added to enhance this part. Try to highlight your significant results with solid reasons and justifications rather than mentioning results again.
Conclusion:
(8) The concluding section should be improved. Authors should include specific results of their research, which extend the current state of knowledge.
References:
(9) Please use the newest one.
Linguistic quality:
(10) The manuscript would benefit from editing by a professional English editor.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
We highly appreciate the reviewer’s insightful comments and suggestions and have revised our manuscript accordingly (see draft).
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
In overall, manuscript is well written.
I have some minor comments
1. title said "variation in climatic conditions", i do not think there is big differencces in climatic condition between 2012 and 2013. author shoudl remove variation in climatic condition in title.
2. In discussion, in first sentence "T is incresin and rainfall~ ", author should put referencce to support the sentencce
3. Table 1, remove period (.) after varieties
4. in regend in figure 2, author should explain what bars and alphabet are representing and put title in x-axis.
Author Response
Reviewers/Editor comments:
Reviewer #3: Comments and Suggestions for Authors
In overall, manuscript is well written.
I have some minor comments
----R: We highly appreciate the reviewer’s insightful comments and suggestions and have revised our manuscript accordingly (see below).
- title said "variation in climatic conditions", i do not think there is big differencces in climatic condition between 2012 and 2013. author shoudl remove variation in climatic condition in title.
----R: Thanks for your suggestion. We are sorry for the unclear and inaccurate descriptions in our previous manuscript.
In the previous version, we intended to mean that differences in climatic condition were caused by seasons, not by years. We have revised the title to avoid confusion. Please see Page 1 Line 1 of the revised manuscript with changes marked as described below.
“Effect of climatic conditions caused by seasons on maize yield, kernel filling and weight in central China”
- In discussion, in first sentence "T is incresing and rainfall~ ", author should put referencce to support the sentencce
----R: Thanks for your suggestions. We have added some new references as below:
Meng, Q. F; Hou, P.; Lobell, D.B.; Wang, H. F.; Cui, Z. L.; Zhang, F. S.; Chen, X. P. The benefits of recent warming for maize production in high latitude China. Climati. Chang. 2014, 122,341–349.
Wang, L. J.; Liao, S. H.; Huang, S. B.; Ming, B.; Meng, Q. F; Wang, P. Increasing concurrent drought and heat during the summer maize season in Huang–Huai–Hai Plain, China. Int. J. Climatol. 2018, 38, 3177–3190.
Please see Page 16 Line 1626-2617 of the revised manuscript with changes marked as below.
“A the mean temperature has increased by 1.2 ℃ since 1960, [47] and The severity of drought stress have increased [48].”
Meanwhile, it was already listed in References part. Please see Pages 20 Lines 2138-2141 of the revised manuscript with changes marked.
- Table 1, remove period (.) after varieties.
----R: Thanks for your suggestion. We have deleted Kernel filling period and maize growth period in Table 1 following the comment.
in regend in figure 2, author should explain what bars and alphabet are representing and put title in x-axis.
----R: Thanks for your valuable suggestion. We have added the x-axis title as “Seasons”, and explained the bars and alphabet in the Fig. 2 title.
Other changes: We do not list other changes here but have marked them in red in the revised manuscript.
In all, the comments of editor and reviewers are all helpful to us, and we have revised the paper point by point. Thanks for your insightful comments.
We look forward to hearing from your responses at your earliest convenience.
Best wishes,
Junzhu Ge
