Drones in Plant Disease Assessment, Efficient Monitoring, and Detection: A Way Forward to Smart Agriculture
, Zhenhao Zhang 1,†, Hongxia Zheng 1, Mohammad Murtaza Alami 3, Abdulmajeed F. Alrefaei 4, Qamar Abbas 5, Syed Atif Hasan Naqvi 6,*, Muhammad Junaid Rao 7, Walid F. A. Mosa 8, Qamar Abbas 9, Azhar Hussain 2, Muhammad Zeeshan Hassan 6 and Lei Zhou 1,*
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
I have reviewed your manuscript entitled "Application of Remote Sensing in Plant Disease Assessment: Efficient Monitoring and Detection: A Way Forward to Smart Agriculture" and have some suggestions for major revisions.
Firstly, the title of the manuscript should be modified to reflect the drone technology.
Secondly, the format of the manuscript needs to be revised to fit the journal's style. Also, the location and size of the images need to be adjusted. Furthermore, some captions, such as "Fig 5: How remote sensing using drone technology determines the plant health status," seem inappropriate and need to be revised.
Moreover, I suggest adding an independent section on outlook and future trends before the conclusion. This section would allow readers to gain insight into where the field is heading and potential areas for further research. The reviewers and readers would like to see the author's clear ideas and insights on the subject in this section.
Finally, is it possible to tabulate the applications of drone-based remote sensing in plant disease assessment according to crop type as well, such as grains, fruits, etc? This table could provide readers with a more detailed understanding of how the technology has been applied and its effectiveness in different plant types.
The writing sounds reasonable, but the template of the journal was not followed well for Figures, tables, etc.
Author Response
Point by Point Response to Reviewer-I Comments and Suggestions
Dear Authors, I have reviewed your manuscript entitled "Application of Remote Sensing in Plant Disease Assessment: Efficient Monitoring and Detection: A Way Forward to Smart Agriculture" and have some suggestions for major revisions.
Response: Dear Reviewer, Thank you very much for your time to review this manuscript.
Firstly, the title of the manuscript should be modified to reflect the drone technology.
Response: Thank you very much for your valuable comment, the title of the article has been modified and the only drone technology has been highlighted.
Secondly, the format of the manuscript needs to be revised to fit the journal's style. Also, the location and size of the images need to be adjusted. Furthermore, some captions, such as "Fig 5: How remote sensing using drone technology determines the plant health status," seem inappropriate and need to be revised.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comment, the format settings of the journal has been much adjusted for tables and figures while some tables will only be settled in clean version file. The caption of the figure has been revised and amended.
Moreover, I suggest adding an independent section on outlook and future trends before the conclusion. This section would allow readers to gain insight into where the field is heading and potential areas for further research. The reviewers and readers would like to see the author's clear ideas and insights on the subject in this section.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comments, a new heading of outlook and future trends has been added up with comprehensive material depicting the essence of the subject matter in the current era, surely this section allow readers to gain insight into where the field is heading and potential areas for further research
Finally, is it possible to tabulate the applications of drone-based remote sensing in plant disease assessment according to crop type as well, such as grains, fruits, etc? This table could provide readers with a more detailed understanding of how the technology has been applied and its effectiveness in different plant types.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comment, the applications of the drone-based remote sensing has been tabulated in Table 3 and Table 5 where we have tried our best to accumulate much information valuable for the readers and the scientific community.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is a traditional or narrative approach to reviewing the literature. Specifically, it reviewed the literature on the utilization of drone-derived remotely sensed (RS) data in detecting and mapping crop diseases. The major flow of the study is that it is not clearly explained how the authors derived their literature and what type of literature was considered. This makes the study unrepeatable. Secondly, the study is extremely narrative than critical. For instance, on lines 435 to 645, the authors are presenting more of a narration of what the studies were on and what they used, and what the realized findings were. It is suggested that instead of being narrative, key points on how UAV RS data could detect diseases be highlighted first and explained. Then the examples provided be used to reinforce and explain how it has been done in the literature. Thirdly, the article is fraught with punctuation, grammatical errors, and long sentences which makes it difficult in some instances to understand the presented arguments. Fourthly, the authors did not check their figures. Some of the figures are floating hence they shifted upon submission. Finally, the structuring of the paper as well as the alignment of ideas requires critical and close examination. Based on the above-mentioned concerns, the article is not recommended for consideration in its current state.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
English editing is required.
Author Response
Point by point response to Reviewer-II comments and suggestions
The paper is a traditional or narrative approach to reviewing the literature. Specifically, it reviewed the literature on utilizing drone-derived remotely sensed (RS) data in detecting and mapping crop diseases.
Response: Thanks Sir. Your comment and suggestions have helped us to revise this manuscript. We have revised the manuscript.
The major flow of the study is that it is not clearly explained how the authors derived their literature and what type of literature was considered. This makes the study unrepeatable.
Response: Dear Sir, thanks for your comments and suggestions. Your critical review has assisted us in modifying the manuscript. We have carefully revised the whole manuscript, including the abstract, Introduction and objectives. In this revised manuscript, we described methods for disease detection, including old generation such as serological, molecular and traditional, whichare not well suited for the timely detection of plant diseases. Then we have explained new generation methods for plant disease detection, such as sensors and algorithms mounted on drones to detect plant diseases. We have constructed a table for sensors and differentiated sensors critically. In this manuscript, we have added specifications of new drones such as Hybrid VTOLS and compared them with the fixed wing and rotary wing in Tables and text. We also discussed the novel approaches focusing on recent disease detection using drones. Finally, drone applications for plant disease detection using traditional and deep learning machine algorithms were discussed. This manuscript has been critically reviewed, removing the previous ambiguous statements and summaries. New figures and tables have been added. Please see the highlighted version in red color
Secondly, the study is extremely narrative than critical. For instance, on lines 435 to 645, the authors are presenting more of a narration of what the studies were on and what they used, and what the realized findings were. It is suggested that instead of being narrative, key points on how UAV RS data could detect diseases be highlighted first and explained. Then the examples provided be used to reinforce and explain how it has been done in the literature.
Response: Thanks for your critical review. This helps us alot. We have revised the whole manuscript. Please see the abstract (Lines 30-37);the Introduction has been modified (See lines 52-70 and 100-117). Our objectives are now clear, see lines (127-131); old generation methods such as serological and molecular methods have been revised (see lines 146-1540), and sensors with suitable examples have been revised see lines 281-311, Operating mechanisms of drones and new drones have been added (lines 406-422). Furthermore, machine learning models and deep learning models used to classify images obtained using drones have been critically revised see lines 799-824 and 1052-1141
Thirdly, the article is fraught with punctuation, grammatical errors, and long sentences which makes it difficult in some instances to understand the presented arguments.
Response: Dear Sir, Thanks for your suggestions. We have tried to remove grammatical mistakes.
Fourthly, the authors did not check their figures. Some of the figures are floating hence they shifted upon submission.
Response: Dear Sir, Thanks for your corrections. We will submit figures according to your suggestions.
Response:
Finally, the structuring of the paper as well as the alignment of ideas requires critical and close examination. Based on the above-mentioned concerns, the article is not recommended for consideration in its current state.
Response: Please see theversion of the manuscript. We have revised the whole manuscript as mentioned above. Hope this version will not disappoint you.
Also address the yellow sticky note points in pdf file of reviewer I in which he has also pointed out some issues and they should also be addressed just like the above sequence in this file.
Response: Thanks Sir. We have revised the manuscript and corrected the phrases that you have highlighted.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The review paper of drone technologies to assess plant diseases addresses an important and hot topic nowadays.
In order to improve the paper. my main concerns are the following:
1. Authors could indicate clearly the protocol to review those papers, and why others were left out. This is not mentioned in the paper.
2. Figures 4 and 5 are very general, and they should be better described in the text.
3. Although sensor features and crops are described in Tables, a section with more discussed ways to the future could be included mentioning achievements clear and gaps to the reader.
Text is correct, it could be more argumentative in some parts.
Author Response
Point by Point Response to Reviewer-III Comments and Suggestions
The review paper of drone technologies to assess plant diseases addresses an important and hot topic nowadays.
Response: Dear Sir, Thanks for your appreciations.
In order to improve the paper. my main concerns are the following:
Response:
- Authors could indicate clearly the protocol to review those papers, and why others were left out. This is not mentioned in the paper.
Response: Dear Sir thanks for your comments. We have revised the whole manuscript according to your suggestions. Please see the highlighted paragraphs.
- Figures 4 and 5 are very general, and they should be better described in the text.
Response: Thanks, Sir. Figure 4 has been removed and a new figure has been added and has been described in lines 497-525. Figure 5 legend has been modified see lines 797-800. Also, text have been added about the sensors please see lines; 291-321 and Table 3.
- Although sensor features and crops are described in Tables, a section with more discussed ways to the future could be included mentioning achievements clearly and gaps to the reader.
Response: Thanks Sir for your suggestions. Please see the conclusion, limitations, and future perspectives. We have revised this section according to your suggestions.
Thanks
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I suggest Accept in the present form.
I suggest Accept in the present form.
