Biofumigation by Mustard Plants as an Application for Controlling Postharvest Gray Mold in Apple Fruits
, Zitong Yang 1,†, Wen Song 1, Hanqing Zhao 1, Qin Ye 1, Heng Xu 1, Baishi Hu 1, Danyu Shen 1,* and Daolong Dou 1
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript by Tian et al., describes the antifungal effect of mustard flowers and its potential to serve as a postharvest biocontrol agent.
Although the results of the study are very initial, the article is well-written and interesting. I do feel that more work should be done to deepen the knowledge of the mode of action, and the active compounds, however as a small initial study it is well-designed. do have a few questions and remarks that I think should be taken into concentration before the article can be accepted for publication.
1. In the material and method, the concentration of the treatment (the plant powder) is in g/L. Is the concentration in gram fresh weight per liter of air? please make this point clear.
2. in section 2.4 please mention the concentrations that you used.
3. Line 138- fix the units.
4. line 140- double layer cheese cloth? - please add.
5. The control contains water - how much water was added? Can it affect the humidity in the plates? in the box? Can it also increase fungal growth? As I understand the treatment was plant powder with no liquid. please make this point clearer.
6. Germination assays usually are performed on glass slides. Did the authors spread the conidia suspension? was placed in the middle of the plate only? How the ungerminated conidia were counted using a hemocytometer Weren't they placed on the agar?
7. It is hard to view the fungal colony in Figure 2A. Please provide also photos of the colony on the third day without the plant tissue.
8. Figure 2B- please ass statistics to the graph (for all graphs).
9. Figure 2C- the fungal morphology in which concentration? please also add a scale and information about the microscope objective.
10. Germination of B. cinerea on a plate usually occurs only when the colony reaches the boundaries of the plate. Did it happen after 14 days in both of the tested concentrations? Did the authors try to see what is happening after a longer period of growth?
11. What about natural decay after 20 days of storage? were any rot in both group?
12. I think that the authors should address in the discussion how they think this treatment will be applicable in the future in storage rooms.
minor:
Line 161- in vitro- italics
section 2.7- what was the concentration or the amount of the powder for the treatment?
TSS and acid- please add how it was conducted. especially the acidity since the reference is directed to another article.
line 225- B. cinerea- italics.
389- Penicillium digitatum- italics.
399- in vitro- italics.
Author Response
Reviewer 1
The manuscript by Tian et al., describes the antifungal effect of mustard flowers and its potential to serve as a postharvest biocontrol agent.
Although the results of the study are very initial, the article is well-written and interesting. I do feel that more work should be done to deepen the knowledge of the mode of action, and the active compounds, however as a small initial study it is well-designed. do have a few questions and remarks that I think should be taken into concentration before the article can be accepted for publication.
Response: We appreciate your pertinent comments. We have addressed all the points raised by you. Please see details as follows.
- In the material and method, the concentration of the treatment (the plant powder) is in g/L. Is the concentration in gram fresh weight per liter of air? please make this point clear.
Response: In the treatment, the concentration unit g/L represents grams of plant powder per liter of volume. We added details in the revised manuscript.
- in section 2.4 please mention the concentrations that you used.
Response: We have added the concentration details in section 2.4.
- Line 138- fix the units.
Response: Revised accordingly.
- line 140- double layer cheese cloth? - please add.
Response: Revised accordingly.
- The control contains water - how much water was added? Can it affect the humidity in the plates? in the box? Can it also increase fungal growth? As I understand the treatment was plant powder with no liquid. please make this point clearer.
Response: An equal volume of water was used as the control, and was added to the lid of the inverted petri dish, which did not affect the fungal growth of B. cinerea.
- Germination assays usually are performed on glass slides. Did the authors spread the conidia suspension? was placed in the middle of the plate only? How the ungerminated conidia were counted using a hemocytometer Weren't they placed on the agar?
Response: The conidia suspension was evenly spread onto the center of the water agar plate. The criterion for spore germination was set as a germ tube length greater than half the maximum diameter of the spore. We randomly counted fifty conidia in each field of view, and we first counted the germinated conidia, while the remaining were ungerminated conidia.
- It is hard to view the fungal colony in Figure 2A. Please provide also photos of the colony on the third day without the plant tissue.
Response: In order to observe the fumigation effect for several consecutive days, we did not open the petri dish every day to present volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from mustard overflow and took such photos. To make it clearer for readers, we marked the edge of the fungal colony with the red circle on the revised Figure 2A.
- Figure 2B- please ass statistics to the graph (for all graphs).
Response: Revised accordingly.
- Figure 2C- the fungal morphology in which concentration? please also add a scale and information about the microscope objective.
Response: The concentration of the fungal morphology in Figure 2C was 10 g/L.
- Germination of B. cinereaon a plate usually occurs only when the colony reaches the boundaries of the plate. Did it happen after 14 days in both of the tested concentrations? Did the authors try to see what is happening after a longer period of growth?
Response: It took 14 days for fumigated B. cinerea colony to produce spores. Spores produced by control group were collected after incubation at the same condition for 7 days. We didn’t further observe after a longer time.
- What about natural decay after 20 days of storage? were any rot in both group?
Response: Both control and treatment groups of apples inoculated with B. cinerea had varying degrees of decay after 20 days of storage. However, the rot area of apples fumigated with mustard were much smaller than the control.
- I think that the authors should address in the discussion how they think this treatment will be applicable in the future in storage rooms.
Response: We added more discussion.
minor:
Line 161- in vitro- italics
Response: Revised accordingly.
section 2.7- what was the concentration or the amount of the powder for the treatment?
Response: Fresh Dilong-1 powder at concentrations of 10 and 20 g/L were used for the treatment, respectively.
TSS and acid- please add how it was conducted. especially the acidity since the reference is directed to another article.
Response: We added the related methods in the revised manuscript.
line 225- B. cinerea- italics.
Response: Revised accordingly.
389- Penicillium digitatum- italics.
Response: Revised accordingly.
399- in vitro- italics.
Response: Revised accordingly.
Reviewer 2 Report
This is an interesting manuscript about Biofumigation by mustard plants as an application for controlling postharvest gray mold in apple fruits
The present work was organized logically.
However, I have some points that need to be addressed as follows.
1. Keyword should be different than title
2. In introduction you did not write anything about Botrytis?
3. In material you wrote many pathogens but you did not identify it this is problem?
4. I did not found any concentration in M&M
5. The Fig 1 B need to improve
6. Fig 3 what the bar in this fig
7. Also Fig 5 what the bar is SD or SE
8. the most important point that the discussion it need to improve to discussed the results
If found useful, cite these recent references of Bacillus
Junior O.J.C.,Youssef K., Koyama R., Ahmed S., Dominguez A.R.,Mühlbeier D.T., Roberto S.R. 2019. Control of Gray Mold on Clamshell-Packaged ‘Benitaka’ Table Grapes Using Sulphur Dioxide Pads and Perforated Liners. Pathogens, 8, 271.https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens8040271
Abo-Elyousr, K.A.M., Al-Qurashi, A.D. & Almasoudi, N.M. Evaluation of the synergy between Schwanniomyces vanrijiae and propolis in the control of Penicillium digitatum on lemons. Egypt J Biol Pest Control 31, 66 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41938-021-00415-4
Kashyap, A.S; Manzar, N.; Nebapure, S.M.; Rajawat, M.V.S.; Deo, M.M.; Singh, J.P.; Kesharwani, A.K.; Singh, R.P.; Dubey, S.C.; Singh, D. Unraveling Microbial Volatile Elicitors Using a Transparent Methodology for Induction of Systemic Resistance and Regulation of Antioxidant Genes at Expression Levels in Chili against Bacterial Wilt Disease. Antioxidants 2022, 11,404. https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox11020404
Abo-Elyousr KAM, Najeeb M. Almasoudi, Ahmed W.M. Abdelmagid, Sergio R. Roberto, Khamis Youssef 2020. Plant extracts treatments induce resistance to bacterial spot on tomato plants for a sustainable system Horticulturae, 6, 36; https://doi.org/10.3390/horticulturae6020036
Kashyap, A.S; Manzar, N.; Nebapure, S.M.; Rajawat, M.V.S.; Deo, M.M.; Singh, J.P.; Kesharwani, A.K.; Singh, R.P.; Dubey, S.C.; Singh, D. Unraveling Microbial Volatile Elicitors Using a Transparent Methodology for Induction of Systemic Resistance and Regulation of Antioxidant Genes at Expression Levels in Chili against Bacterial Wilt Disease. Antioxidants 2022, 11,404. https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox11020404
Moderate editing of English language
Author Response
Reviewer 2
This is an interesting manuscript about Biofumigation by mustard plants as an application for controlling postharvest gray mold in apple fruits
The present work was organized logically.
However, I have some points that need to be addressed as follows.
Response: We appreciate your pertinent comments. We have addressed all the points raised by you. Please see details as follows.
- Keyword should be different than title
Response: Revised accordingly.
- In introduction you did not write anything about Botrytis?
Response: We have added more details of Botrytis cinerea in the Introduction.
- In material you wrote many pathogens but you did not identify it this is problem?
Response: All the pathogens used in this study have been reported to be postharvest pathogens, and we added corresponding references in the revised manuscript.
- I did not found any concentration in M&M
Response: We added concentration details in the revised M&M.
- The Fig 1 B need to improve
Response: Revised accordingly.
- Fig 3 what the bar in this fig
Response: Revised accordingly.
- Also Fig 5 what the bar is SD or SE
Response: The bar is SD.
- the most important point that the discussion it need to improve to discussed the results
Response: We have revised the discussion.
If found useful, cite these recent references of Bacillus
Junior O.J.C.,Youssef K., Koyama R., Ahmed S., Dominguez A.R.,Mühlbeier D.T., Roberto S.R. 2019. Control of Gray Mold on Clamshell-Packaged ‘Benitaka’ Table Grapes Using Sulphur Dioxide Pads and Perforated Liners. Pathogens, 8, 271.https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens8040271
Abo-Elyousr, K.A.M., Al-Qurashi, A.D. & Almasoudi, N.M. Evaluation of the synergy between Schwanniomyces vanrijiae and propolis in the control of Penicillium digitatum on lemons. Egypt J Biol Pest Control 31, 66 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41938-021-00415-4
Kashyap, A.S; Manzar, N.; Nebapure, S.M.; Rajawat, M.V.S.; Deo, M.M.; Singh, J.P.; Kesharwani, A.K.; Singh, R.P.; Dubey, S.C.; Singh, D. Unraveling Microbial Volatile Elicitors Using a Transparent Methodology for Induction of Systemic Resistance and Regulation of Antioxidant Genes at Expression Levels in Chili against Bacterial Wilt Disease. Antioxidants 2022, 11,404. https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox11020404
Abo-Elyousr KAM, Najeeb M. Almasoudi, Ahmed W.M. Abdelmagid, Sergio R. Roberto, Khamis Youssef 2020. Plant extracts treatments induce resistance to bacterial spot on tomato plants for a sustainable system Horticulturae, 6, 36; https://doi.org/10.3390/horticulturae6020036
Kashyap, A.S; Manzar, N.; Nebapure, S.M.; Rajawat, M.V.S.; Deo, M.M.; Singh, J.P.; Kesharwani, A.K.; Singh, R.P.; Dubey, S.C.; Singh, D. Unraveling Microbial Volatile Elicitors Using a Transparent Methodology for Induction of Systemic Resistance and Regulation of Antioxidant Genes at Expression Levels in Chili against Bacterial Wilt Disease. Antioxidants 2022, 11,404. https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox11020404
Response: We have cited several of the above references.
