The Chemical Capping Regulation Mechanism of Cotton Main Stem Growth
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1. Line 10. “manual topping” or “Manual topping”,
2. Line 11. What is the difference of manual “topping” and chemical “capping”?
3. Line 16. “chemical capping agent treatment is what? “DPC treatment” also is a chemical capping（topping）treatment
4. Line 19-23. What is the control group？
5. Line 27. What does capping agent mean？DPC or ？
6. Line 29. The specific name of the DPC can be placed in the abstract.
7. Line 33. Common names of plants, animals, fungi, etc. must be followed by the Latin name the first time the common name is used. Latin name must include Authority example: maize (Zea mays L.).
8.Line 71. Are “no topping” and “without topping” the same treatment?
9.Line 92,109 etc., Such as “kg/hm2” or “kg/hm2“
10. Line 216. I was unable to confirm this statement from items presented in Figure 3. Figure 3 is very difficult to understand. Part of the content is not clear, it needs considerable relabel. Perhaps some of my confusion is caused by a poor understanding of your groups.
11. Line 222. What is meant by aA?
12.Line 288. What is meant by “close to”
13.Line 292. Figure 7 is very difficult to understand. The footnotes need considerable rewriting.
14. Line15, Line 359 etc., Write in third person, avoid personal pronouns, such as we, they, you, I, or our, their, yours
15. The writing skill needs to be improved significantly. Professional help may kindly be taken.
16. For ordinal numbers use the word first, second, third, fourth not 2nd,3rd,4th
17. Pay attention to capitalization of the first letter of the sentence.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for your reviewe!
Based on your opinion, English through the manuscript has been edited carefully. 4 aspects mentioned to be improved has been checked and rewritten too.
For further comments, I would like to answer or explain as below
- Line 10. “manual topping” or “Manual topping”,
A/E: has been corrected
- Line 11. What is the difference of manual “topping” and chemical “capping”?
A/E: manual “topping” means remove tip artificially, chemical “capping” means spray
chemicals on plant top to regulate development.
- Line 16. “chemical capping agent treatment is what? “DPC treatment” also is a chemical capping（topping）treatment
A/E: In this manuscript, “chemical capping agent treatment” or “capping agent
treatment” specially refer to the treatment with chemical capping agent, it has changed as “CA treatment” in the manuscript. “DPC treatment” refer to the treatment with DPC. Both treatment are “chemical capping treatment”
- Line 19-23. What is the control group？
A/E: “the control group” means CK, performance of CK has be described.
- Line 27. What does capping agent mean？DPC or ？
A/E: Please refer to the 3th comment
- Line 29. The specific name of the DPC can be placed in the abstract.
A/E: The specific name of the DPC has been added.
- Line 33. Common names of plants, animals, fungi, etc. must be followed by the Latin name the first time the common name is used. Latin name must include Authority example: maize (Zea mays L.).
A/E: Latin name of cotton has been added.
- Line 71. Are “no topping” and “without topping” the same treatment?
A/E: Yes, they are. “without topping” has been changed to “no topping”
- Line 92,109 etc., Such as “kg/hm2” or “kg/hm2“
A/E: All of similar quantifier have been corrected.
- Line 216. I was unable to confirm this statement from items presented in Figure 3. Figure 3 is very difficult to understand. Part of the content is not clear, it needs considerable relabel. Perhaps some of my confusion is caused by a poor understanding of your groups.
A/E: That has been rewritten.
- Line 222. What is meant by aA?
A/E: It has been deleted
- Line 288. What is meant by “close to”
A/E: That has been changed to “similar to”
- Line 292. Figure 7 is very difficult to understand. The footnotes need considerable rewriting.
A/E: That has been replaced.
- Line15, Line 359 etc., Write in third person, avoid personal pronouns, such as we, they, you, I, or our, their, yours
A/E: That has been rewritten.
- The writing skill needs to be improved significantly. Professional help may kindly be taken.
A/E: The manuscript has been checked and rewritten
- For ordinal numbers use the word first, second, third, fourth not 2nd,3rd,4th
A/E: That has been replaced.
- Pay attention to capitalization of the first letter of the sentence.
A/E: That has been checked and rewritten
Reviewer 2 Report
This is an interesting little paper. Different from the previous study that focus on the inverted 4th leaves of the main stem, the study was carried out from the perspective of hormone changes in the plant tip. At the same time, the research subjects were divided into two parts, 0~5 cm and 5~10cm, taking into account the different characteristics of different hormone production and transfer in the plant. The study period was longer too, with hormonal changes monitored for 9 days and plant development monitored for 21 days. In conclusion, this paper tries to explain the regulatory mechanism of chemical capping on main stem development of cotton more comprehensively by combining hormonal changes with plant development, and to a certain extent, it achieves the goal.
In the discussion part, the paper pays more attention to the verification of previous research results, and lacks new findings and summary. It is suggested that the author should further refine and summarize based on the work.
Overall, the paper meets the publication requirements of Agronomy, is recommended publication after improve and modified by the author.
English language need to be minor edited.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for your review!
Based on your opinion, English through the manuscript has been edited carefully.
The discussion part has been rewritten, apart from refine and summarize, also point out shortage of the study, and pointed out further research direction.
Reviewer 3 Report
General comment: This experiment takes a new perspective by examining the change in hormone content in the apex of the main stem, combined with the development of the main stem, to explain the mechanism of chemical capping on the regulation of cotton growth.
Introduction: The introduction should be crisp and much more informative. Add some latest references from 2020 to 2023.
Methodology: While only 4 hormones (IAA, ABA, GA3, ZR) and 3 plant development indicators (plant height, fruit branch number, upper fruit section average length) were selected the experimental design (2 periods, 2 sampling sites, and 4 consecutive sampling measurements) and careful statistical analysis reasonably explain the mechanism of chemical capping.
Results: The concentration changes of 4 hormones (IAA, ABA, GA3, ZR), and 3 plant development indicators (plant height, fruit branch number, upper fruit section average length) were compared and analyzed based on 2 sections and 2 times. Generally, the concentrations of IAA and GA3 decreased while ABA concentration increased. ZR concentration changed slightly. Additionally, the plant height, number of fruit branches, and average length of upper internode (5th and above) decreased, while the capping agent treatment had a stronger inhibitory effect than the DPC treatment.
I suggest first introducing plant growth indicators, and then describing hormone changes to explain the mechanism of chemical capping.
Standard errors should be indicated on the diagram.
Discussion: The discussion should be described as a separate subject. Please add some lines about the usefulness of these findings and provide suggestions for future research.
References: All references in the text and list should be cross-checked to ensure that they follow the format of the journal.
The manuscript should be checked by a native English tongue.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for your review!
Based on your opinion, English through the manuscript has been edited carefully.
The discussion part has been rewritten, apart from refine and summarize, also point out shortage of the study, and pointed out further research direction.
Standard errors have been indicated on the diagram.
All references in the text and list has been cross-checked too.
For your suggestion, introducing plant growth indicators firstly, then describing hormone changes, we didn’t accept it because the manuscript pay more attention to hormone changes, and other reviewer didn’t give similar opinion.
Reviewer 4 Report
General comments:
The manuscript is not polished and ready for submission.
Needs to be checked for consistency throughout the document. As an example, the upper section of nodes measured is referred to in a number of different ways. Also, treatments I, II are referred to differently in the figures as they are in the text. Referencing style is not consistent.
There are several basic grammatical errors. There are several places where sentences do not begin with a capital letter.
The manuscript needs improved scientific rigour. The experiments are unable to be reproduced with the information detailed and statistical tests are not described
I find the structure of the paper a little confusing. The results and analysis sections start off with statements that perhaps are more suited to the introduction and/or discussion. Overall, the results need to be better described. This needs some quantitative results presented. Rather than simply stating “increased significantly” and “remained different” please indicate by how much the treatments had an effect. What was the percentage difference compared with the controls?
Figure labels need more detail to stand alone from the paper. Please check formatting of the figures.
Specific comments and suggestions for the authors
Line 2: remove “study on the”
Line 4: check for consistency
Line 12: Delete “It is well known”
Line 15: are the experiments repeated across two years?
Line 16: how do these times relate to plant development and timing of the chemical applications
Line 33: “artificial”
Lines 77-84: At what point of plant development?
Line 84: What is the testable hypothesis? What are the aims and objectives of the study?
Line 88: it would be helpful to specify country.
Line 92: I’m not familiar with these units of measurement “/hm2”
Line 94: is this in terms of pesticide applications, or other plant growth hormones?
Line 95: how were the plants irrigated? Is this typical of these production systems?
Line 98: what were the characteristics of the variety that was used?
Line 108: How was the chemical applied? By ground rig?
Line 111: How many days after planting? How do these times relate to developmental stage?
Line 130: How long between sample collection and freezing? I’m not sure that the word “incubator” is the best word- is this an insulated box?
Line 134: what times were the plants sampled (“four times”)?
Line 134: Are the samples taken from fresh/new plants? Or from a plant that was previously sampled?
Line 137: I don’t understand what the “test items” are. Is this a concentration pf hormone in each of the 2 plant sections at the apex?
Line 139: change “our” to “out”
Line 140: What statistical tests were used? What was the level of significance?
Line 142: .. at the end of the sentence
Line 169: Please check legends of the figure. The figure needs a more descriptive caption. What do the letters refer to? Significant difference at P<0.05? What does T1 and T2 stand for (i.e., information is available in the text, but not in the figure caption).
Line 196: which are the most vigorous parts of the plant?
Line 198: Need consistency between the presentation of the results text and the figure
Line 255: I can not see the significant difference as they appear to have the same letters in Figure 5. Is this based on statistics?
Line 255: isn’t it measured on Day 7, not Day 6?
Line 268: significantly inhibited by the capping treatment?
Line 281: On the y-axes, is this the number of fruiting branches? An average per plant?
Line 292: Need to specify that internode length is of the upper 5 internodes- so this is changing?
Line 337: GA3?
Line 350: References
Line 361: is this application of chemicals?
Line 363: Compared with untreated controls?
Line 364: How is it affected? Is it reduced?
Line 369: at what levels and when? More is needed regarding the implications and impacts of your results.
Lines 370-398: These sections need to be completed.
This manuscript needs to be re-written with a specific focus on improving the English grammar.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for your review!
Based on your opinion, The manuscript has been rewritten, the consistency, English, grammar and other problems through the manuscript has been edited carefully.
The 2nd section “Materials and Methods” has been supplied to make it clearer. The 3nd section “Results and analysis” has been rewritten, all of the statements in the beginning have been deleted.
For the figures, we add notes: 1. Different letters above the bars indicate a significant difference at P< 0.05, different capital letter indicate an extremely difference at P< 0.01. 2. T1 refers to treated at July 12th, T2 refers to treated at July18th. 3. Line I and III representing CA treatment, line II and IV representing DPC treatment in two treatment time respectively. 4. The time points with significant differences in the figure are labelled by different letters, without significant are not labelled to avoid confuse. 5.The same below.
For your comments, I would like to answer or explain as below:
Line 2: remove “study on the”
A/E: It has been removed.
Line 4: check for consistency
A/E: “SUN” has been changed to “Sun”, The institute name in Line 87 has been corrected for consistency.
Line 12: Delete “It is well known”
A/E: It has been deleted, and the sentence has been rewritten.
Line 15: are the experiments repeated across two years?
A/E: Yes, it is, and the sentence has been rewritten. changed “during 2019-2020” to “in 2019 and 2020”.
Line 16: how do these times relate to plant development and timing of the chemical applications
A/E: Chemical capping should be conducted at flowering stage, it is critical time for vegetative growth turn to reproductive growth
Line 33: “artificial”
A/E: It has been corrected.
Lines 77-84: At what point of plant development?
A/E: Chemical capping should be conducted at flowering stage.
Line 84: What is the testable hypothesis? What are the aims and objectives of the study?
A/E: Please see line 81-84 “Combine the hormone concentration changes and development of plant apex after chemical capping, try to explain the regulation mechanism of chemical capping on plant apex growth”.
Line 88: it would be helpful to specify country.
A/E: “China” has been supllied.
Line 92: I’m not familiar with these units of measurement “/hm2”
A/E: It has been corrected
Line 94: is this in terms of pesticide applications, or other plant growth hormones?
A/E: Both.
Line 95: how were the plants irrigated? Is this typical of these production systems?
A/E: Our area is rain-fed agriculture, need to be irrigated in the case of very special conditions, generally for sprinkler irrigation.
Line 98: what were the characteristics of the variety that was used?
A/E: “earlier matured and verticillium wilt resistance” variety, has been added up.
Line 108: How was the chemical applied? By ground rig?
A/E: Please see line 108 and 125: “Uniform leaf spraying”.
Line 111: How many days after planting? How do these times relate to developmental stage?
A/E: Flowering stage, it is critical time for vegetative growth turn to reproductive growth, about 80 days after sowing.
Line 130: How long between sample collection and freezing? I’m not sure that the word “incubator” is the best word- is this an insulated box?
A/E: Please see line 129 “immediately”, no more than twenty minutes. “incubator” refers to “Plastic foam box”, with ice pack inside to keep low temperature.
Line 134: what times were the plants sampled (“four times”)?
A/E: That should be three times after treatment, has be corrected.
Line 134: Are the samples taken from fresh/new plants? Or from a plant that was previously sampled?
A/E: New plants were re-selected for each sampling, added up.
Line 137: I don’t understand what the “test items” are. Is this a concentration of hormone in each of the 2 plant sections at the apex?
A/E: Yes, it is. Already deleted “test items”
Line 139: change “our” to “out”
A/E: It has been corrected
Line 140: What statistical tests were used? What was the level of significance?
A/E: “Duncan's new repolarization detection method”, and “significant level at 0.05 and 0.01” added up.
Line 142: at the end of the sentence
A/E: Has been added up
Line 169: Please check legends of the figure. The figure needs a more descriptive caption. What do the letters refer to? Significant difference at P<0.05? What does T1 and T2 stand for (i.e., information is available in the text, but not in the figure caption).
A/E: Has been added up
Line 196: which are the most vigorous parts of the plant?
A/E: Corrected, deleted “the most”.
Line 198: Need consistency between the presentation of the results text and the figure
A/E: All of the presentation has been rewritten.
Line 255: I can not see the significant difference as they appear to have the same letters in Figure 5. Is this based on statistics?
A/E: All of the presentation has been rewritten.
Line 255: isn’t it measured on Day 7, not Day 6?
A/E: On Day 14, has been re-written.
Line 268: significantly inhibited by the capping treatment?
A/E: Yes.
Line 281: On the y-axes, is this the number of fruiting branches? An average per plant?
A/E: Yes, has been added up.
Line 292: Need to specify that internode length is of the upper 5 internodes- so this is changing?
A/E: Yes, has been added up.
Line 337: GA3?
A/E: In the reference 25th, it is GA, not GA3. GA3 is a constituent of GA.
Line 350: References
A/E: References 12th, has been added up.
Line 361: is this application of chemicals?
A/E: Yes
Line 363: Compared with untreated controls?
A/E: Yes.
Line 364: How is it affected? Is it reduced?
A/E: Yes.
Line 369: at what levels and when? More is needed regarding the implications and impacts of your results.
A/E: That is not the emphasis of this paper. The chemical capping technology is quite different in different area. For more information, please see reference 8th: Study on Cotton Chemical Topping in Liaohe Cotton Area by Xu, M. et al.
Lines 370-398: These sections need to be completed.
A/E: Done.
Reviewer 5 Report
In the manuscript, Xu et al. investigated the chemical capping regulation mechanism of cotton by measuring the hormone concentrations at the top of main stem as well as other growth indexes such as plant height, number of fruit branches and average length of upper internode. They found that chemical capping operation can decrease the level of IAA and GA3 while increase the level of ABA and ZR at the top of the main stem and thus regulate plant development. They also compared different chemical capping methods and found that chemical capping agent affect hormones more effectively than DPC.
Although this work might be of interest in the field, there are some concerns that should be addressed.
Major concerns:
1, The details of statistical analysis and labeling should be provided.
2, Some descriptions are not consistent with the data or should be expressed more clearly.
(1) Line 174-175. “the ABA concentration of samples at 0–5 cm in each treatment increased significantly”. The authors are intended to say that compared to the CK, the ABA concentrations are higher in certain time points. However, this expression may mislead the readers that ABA concentrations increased with the treatment of chemicals.
(2) Line 176-177. “Meanwhile, the ABA concentration of each sample treated with capping agent was higher than that with DPC.” This is not true for T2 0-5 cm group.
(3) Line 200-201. “the concentration of GA3 under CK and DPC treatment continuously decreased, while that of capping agent treatment remained stable or increased”. This description is not consistent with Figure 3.
(4) Line 202-204. “The concentration of GA3 of DPC treatment was significantly lower than that of CK in day 6, while that in T1 decreased or gradually increased, and the difference narrowed. The GA3 concentration in T2 remarkably decreased.” These sentences are a little bit difficult to understand and might be rephrased.
(5) Line 253-255. “The plant height of the two treatments under the two periods both showed significant or extremely significant difference from that of CK on day 6.” This description is not consistent with Figure 5.
(6) Line 319-320. “The change in ABA concentration was different in the two parts, wherein the values in the samples at 0–5 cm were significantly or extremely significantly higher than those of CK from day 3.” This is not true for T2 0-5 cm group and DPC treatment in T1 0-5 cm group.
Minor concerns:
1, The Figure legend of each Figure should be provided.
2, Some of the descriptions should be more concise.
For example, Line 149 “then increased and increased significantly” may be rephrased as “then significantly increased”; Line 151 “showed significant or extremely significant differences” may be rephrased as “showed significant differences”.
3, Figure 4 should be revised. T2 0-5cm data are missing.
The English language is fine.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for your review!
Based on your opinion, English through the manuscript has been edited carefully.
For your comments, I would like to answer or explain as below:
Major concerns:
1, The details of statistical analysis and labeling should be provided.
A/E: The time points with significant differences among treatments in the figure are labelled by different letters. For other points without significant difference, didn’t labelled to avoid confusion.
2, Some are not consistent with the data or should be expressed more clearly.
A/E: All the descriptions of figures have been rewritten.
Minor concerns:
1, The Figure legend of each Figure should be provided.
A/E: The figures have been adjusted and all legend are showed in each figure.
2, Some of the descriptions should be more concise.
A/E: That have been rewritten.
3, Figure 4 should be revised. T2 0-5cm data are missing.
A/E: It has been replaced.
