Promotion of Growth of Alfalfa by Erwinia persicina Cp2 Exopolysaccharides under NaCl Stress

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

the manuscript submitted to me for review addresses the very important issue of counteracting the effects of excessive soil salinisation. As the Authors mentioned at the beginning of the manuscript, more and more soils are becoming saline and thus it is necessary to seek solutions to this problem. The manuscript itself is interestingly written and explains many issues and mechanisms related to the problem addressed.

However, I have a few suggestions for additions and changes to the manuscript:

Line 63 - 65 I suggest to be supplemented with a reference to references

Line 65 I suggest supplementing also the benefits of growing alfalfa as a legume, I mean the symbiotic nitrogen fixation and other benefits that suggest the introduction of legumes into sustainable agriculture

Line 70 I suggest completing with the requirements for growing alfalfa. This will provide a suitable introduction to the following sentences on salt stress

Line 81 why was this variety chosen? Is it the most widely grown in China? Is it a new variety, recently introduced to cultivation? I suggest you describe this variety

Line 94 The question that arises here is whether it was intentional to achieve 75mmol/L NaCl? If so, why this? Returning to this paragraph after reading the whole manuscript, it puzzles me why a two-factor experiment was not used. As a second factor, it seems right to me to use different NaCl concentrations. As stated in the introduction: "Studies have shown that when 70 salt stress concentration reaches 50~200 mmol/L NaCl, it significantly inhibits the growth 71 and yield of alfalfa [19]."

Figure 7A and 8A are very unreadable please improve their quality, maybe a larger figure size?

Line 349 no reference: [30]?

Line 420 In this section, in my opinion, there was no reference to the fact that, the use of doses higher than 1.5 g/L Cp2 EPS did not result in further improvements but in a reduction in the effectiveness of protection against salt stress. This was highlighted by the authors in the results section. I suggest referring to this question as to what the reasons for this might have been. This is very important when it comes to the widespread use of such a protection method. Also, this could make for very interesting scientific reports. In addition, in the summary of this section or in the conclusions section, I suggest including the prospects for further research in this area which, in my opinion, should be carried out. I believe that it would also be good to refer to the transfer of the research results obtained to large-scale cultivation in agriculture.

Good luck

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

In this manuscript, Chen and co-authors explored the effect of Erwinia Persicina Cp2 exopolysaccharides on alfalfa growth under salt stress, and found Cp2 EPS alleviated the damage of salt stress to alfalfa by physiological and biochemical analysis. In general, the study is meaningful and the experiments are well conducted.

 

Major remarks:

1. The quality (resolution) of Figure 1C(sample CK2) needs to be improved.

2. It is recommended that soil culture experiment to check if Cp2 EPS can help alfalfa to improve salt resistance ability in soil.

 

Minor remarks:

1. The symbol formats of "℃" in lines 95 and 99 are different and should be unified.

2. The first initial of line 110 needs to be capitalized.

3. The first zero of the ordinate "0.04" of Figure 2C is incomplete.

No comments.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

thank you for addressing all the suggestions in the review. In my opinion, the manuscript has been significantly improved. Minor suggestions on the current version of the manuscript:

Table 1 and 2: The form of the tables should be standardized (Table 1 is correctly prepared).

The authors' answer to point 5 should be included in the manuscript with appropriate reference.

Good luck

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx