GEM Project-Derived Maize Lines Crossed with Temperate Elite Tester Lines Make for High-Quality, High-Yielding and Stable Silage Hybrids

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Agronomy-2137701 is very interesting and give the valuable information to the researchers and readers. The subject of the manuscript is consistent with the scope of the Journal. Thus, I suggested that the manuscript need to be minor revised before it is accepted by this journal.

1.     Manuscript must be through language editing.

2.     Line 21: ‘environments’ should be revised as ‘habitats’.

3.     Line 53: ‘yr −1’ should be full name. Please check the full text for the first time abbreviations appear.

4.     Line 210: ‘1kg’ should have a space. Please check the full text.

5.     Line 214: ‘(Shenk et al., 1994)’ references should be in digital form. Please check the full text.

6.     Line 263: ‘gamem_met()’ ?

7.     Line 342, 343: ‘p’ should be italic. Please check the full text

8.     Line 380: ‘P’ should be lower case. Please check the full text

9.     Figure 3: ‘-1’ should be superscript. Please check the full text

10.   The format of the references should be uniform, some with DOI and some without.

11.   The logic and neat of introduction need to be further improved.

12.   Results and discussion must be written separately.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

In the name of all authors, I wish to thank you for the careful read of the manuscript and thoughtful comments. We gave our best to attend to each of the suggestions and make the necessary changes:

Point 1. “Manuscript must be through language editing”

We have made changes in the body of the paper for language editing purposes and to ease the flow of the text.

 

Point 2.  “Line 21: ‘environments’ should be revised as ‘habitats’.”

This is the only requested change we are hesitating to make: the term “environment” is specific for the method and the papers we are referring to here, and we would prefer to keep it as is, to help the reader to follow the methodology.

 

Points 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 

We made changes through the text addressing these formatting oversights.

 

Point 5. “Line 214: ‘(Shenk et al., 1994)’ references should be in digital form. Please check the full text.” and  Point 10.“The format of the references should be uniform, some with DOI and some without.”

You will find the references updated and reformatted.

 

Point 11. "The logic and neat of introduction need to be further improved"

You will find rearranged subsections to improve the logical sequence of the Introduction and changes in the body of the paper to improve the readability. We find that your suggestion in  Point 12. "Results and discussion must be written separately" also contributes to the greater clarity of the text.

 

Thank you again for the careful read of the document, we are looking for your feedback,

 

Authors of the paper

Reviewer 2 Report

Please find attached

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

In the name of all authors, thank you for the careful read of the manuscript and thoughtful comments. It initiated a discussion on further experiments among the group, which is always a sign of a great review. We gave our best to attend to each of your suggestions and make the necessary changes:

 

Firstly, we have made some structural changes to the paper, separating the Discussion section from the results, giving us some more space to address some of your suggestions. Also, numerous minor changes throughout the text to improve on the clarity of the points we are trying to get across.

 

To address your points:

 

Point 1: “NDF and ADF parameters are evaluated in the data analysis for silage conversion, NDF and ADF parameters are of importance. In the text these are outlined in lines 498 to 501. However, it would be useful to know at what extend these parameters were of importance in the proposed selected hybrids.”

 

It does seem important to comment on usefulness of ADF and NDF content as a proxy for animal productivity units, considering their mass use especially in marketing material for commercial silage maize. We addressed this in Discussion section 4.4. (lines 1796 – 1799). Only 2 of the selected hybrids for MTSI for Milk ha^-1 and Milk t^-1 would have been identified as desirable by looking at their ranking for the traditionally assessed silage traits NDF and ADF. A clear representation can be seen by looking at Supplementary Figure S4 b and Figure 5. This approach has an additional drawback in that it would also neglect yield per hectare of the crop as well as stability across the environments.

 

Point 2: “It seems like STARCH was the main driver of the high values of MILK/L and MILK/Ha looking at the high correlations. Is it then, in this research, because of the ears the reason why cows produced more milk or other quality parameters? Despite of Frey et al. (2004) reported results.”

 

In this experiment, we did not separate ears from the stover (biomass without ears) to measure their fraction and quality, biomass samples were taken from the whole-plant biomass, as would have been taken for the ensiling and used for feed. This question deserves further attention though, especially considering the findings of Fray et al. Frey et al. [10] and others [17,67], that genotypes with unfavorable starch concentrations (i.e. ear fraction) can leverage their stover quality to still deliver superior milk yields. This line of investigation calls for experiment that would control for the ear fraction and involve feeding trials, to consider the palatability of the silage, as the unfavorable fiber content might counteract with the milk yields even in hybrids with high starch content.

We touched on this point in lines 1800 to 1808.

 

Point 3: “Did the authors observe any effect of standability or lodging? Have you measured those parameters?”

Since no logging damage or standability issues were observed during the experiment, and no plots had to be removed from the data analysis, standability and logging scoring was not conducted.

 

Point 4: “Figure 1 was too small and Figure 2 was cut on the right side. Please, improve the quality of the figures. This is true for other figures in the supplementary material.”

 

We adjusted all figures in the main text and Supplementary material. Superscript in the axis titles and legends wis corrected for.

Point 5: “Each table figure should be self-explanatory. Please describe parameters in Table 3”

All table parameters stated and described in Table 3, apologies for the oversight.

 

Point 6: “Figure S1. Could you please include all the traits NDF and ADF, for example”

We have supplemented diagnostic plots with model fit for other quality parameters: NDF, ADF, crude protein content and starch content.

 

Points 7, 8 and 9: “Table S6, is not mentioned in the text, isn’t it? The caption reads “Environments ranked for Milk ha-1 BLUP values” however in the supplementary materials says summary tables reads” Table S6: AMMI significance table; and in Table S7: Environments ranked for Milk ha-1 BLUP values;....  Please verify that all supplementary materials are cited in the text and the captions are correct;  Please verify that the bibliography is according to journal parameters”

 We have made a large number of small changes through the text to take care of the consistency of all figures, tables and references.

 

Thank you again for the careful read of the document, we are looking for your feedback

 

Authors of the paper

Reviewer 3 Report

In the Introduction section:

please add information about the popular maize lines that usually use for silage. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

 

In the name of all authors, thank you for the careful read of the manuscript and thoughtful comments.

We addressed your suggestion to provide more details on the popular maize lines for silage on the marked in lines 1512 to 1523: it is indeed important to notice that seed companies scarcely publish the characteristics of their silage hybrids in absolute numbers in of animal productivity numbers. In most cases, the relative comparisons between hybris on the market are reported in a combination of subjective quality parameters and now long-time used fiber content, NDF, ADF and lignin. The reasons for this might be many, from novelty of the method to liability concerns, but the fact remains that the public relies on research like this, from public institutes and universities to get the exact data on productivity of hybrids. In commercially available, mid-season silage hybrids, the range is 14.5-22.9 t ha-1⁠, 31-37% and 6.8-8.3% for dry matter yield, starch and crude protein content, respectively [60,61]. This suggests that the GEM-derived hybrids are of high quality based on ADF and NDF. The productivity in Milk ha-1 and Milk t-1 of industrial checks used in this experiment has not been previously reported.

You will also notice rearranged subsections to improve the logical sequence of the Introduction and separrated of the Results and Discussion, as suggested by one of the reviewers. A few additional paragraphs in the Discussion address some aspects of the results raised by other reviewers. We have made changes in the body of the paper for language editing purposes and to ease the flow of the text. Bibliography and the Supplementary Material Table names are adjusted accordingly. There is a large number of small changes, but we kept the “track changes” on, to comply with the journal requirements.

 

Thank you again for the time and the feedback for this manuscript.

 

Kind regards,

 

Authors of the paper

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for your edits. The manuscript was improved.

Best wishes,