Responses of Two-Row and Six-Row Barley Genotypes to Elevated Carbon Dioxide Concentration and Water Stress
, Morteza Zahedi 1, Sara Zare 1, Mehmet Zeki Koçak 2, Mojtaba Nouraein 3, Federico Vita 4,* and Marzia Vergine 5
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic of the study is interesting and relevant to the journal's scope but still I have concern to publish it. Here are some of my comments.
1. The flow of the introduction is poor, re-write the introduction and check the grammar constructions. The first paragraph should be the effects of the abiotic stresses on barley, and the mechanisms of the barley in combatting these stresses. Provide previous research reporting these stresses and the mechanism of stress control. The second paragraph should be on the effect of these stresses on the morpho-physiological traits of the barley plants. The third paragraph should be your hypothesis, the research gaps, and the clear objectives of your study.
2. Clearly indicate the objective of the study. What was the fundamental aim of the study, and what were the exact points tested?
3. Line 97: “Plants were performed”???
4. Experiment was conducted in a greenhouse or a growth chamber? Make it clear in the methodology.
5. How many total numbers of treatments? Indicate it clearly. How do you apply high CO2 and water stress together?
6. Line 113: Water stress was applied at Zadoks 13? what is Zadoks 13?
7. Why CAT, APX, and DPPH are missing in Table 4?
8. Conclusion is lengthy, it should be concise with key findings.
9. The authors did not add any photos of the experimental setup which is very much required to show the phenotypic variations and also to support the results. Furthermore, the pictorial presentation of the work also authenticates the research work.
Some sentences have no structures and have grammatical mistakes. Improve the English language of overall manuscript with an expert in the field.
Author Response
Please, see the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
1.Proper terminology adopts international standard symbols, such as “ ” to “ρb”; what’s mean of Virrig?
2.Format of charts in the manuscript is not standardized, such as Table 4, Table 5,
3.Please supplement the sowing and harvesting time for each treatment,
4.what’s the MPi, GMPi, and TIi ? and What is the value range of I ?
5.Could a mathematical model on the interaction between increased carbon dioxide concentration and water stress on barley yield be proposed?
Overall, the language of this article is easy to understand, the research results are described clearly, and the discussion content is important and prominent. It is recommended to supplement and improve the innovation and scientific value of this study.
Author Response
Please, see the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors evaluated two raw barley genotypes and two six-row barley genotypes under two levels of CO2 concentration and normal and drought stress conditions for several traits. which is a comprehensive work and includes interesting results. However, the manuscript has the following minor and major concerns before acceptance of the article for publication.
Title: The title is very general while only two genotypes from each group were assessed so that is not at all enough for generalization.
Line 37: It is better to replace it with a more specialized word
Line 37: Keywords should be in alphabetical order and different from title words.
Line 95: How about the origin of the genotypes? where were they developed?
Line 95: It seems they would be some varieties. Were they not released?
Line 97: The plant were performed?? Please rewrite and revise the sentence description of the experimental design.
Line 121: According to the Journal guide, all formulas must be in numbering.
Line 128: How many samples? Please add to the text.
Line 266: Please correct "Table".
Line 274: "Family" doesn't seem like the right word because the number of members in each group is so small.
Line 282: Move these definitions below the Table.
Line 288 Table 3: Here provided information about traits and the data shown are overall means in spite of significant effects of the interaction of factors (Table 2). Conclusions from this Table may not be correct in many cases. An example of a wrong conclusion was given in the next comment.
This Table should be removed and replaced by a comparison of treatment combinations or the comparison of treatments in each level of factors separately (Chart of Table).
Table 3: Due to the significant effects of interaction among main factors, the results of the overall mean are different from the results of mean comparisons in each level of the factors separately. you can see in Figure 1, M9316 has the highest CSI in elevated level while here based on the overall mean M9316 has the lowest mean 2.71.
Line 295: All comparisons and conclusions must be revised.
Line 314 Table 4: Also here, data shown are overall means of genotypes in spite of significant effects of the interaction of three factors for several traits (Table 2).
Line 355 Table 5: Also here, the same concern.
Line 387 Figure 1: Here treatment combinations were compared and seem to be correct.
Line 530: What does mean of second-order?
Line 722: References should be represented by the number only.
Line 760: conclusion: It is suggested that according to scientific writing rules, one well-developed paragraph is sufficient for a conclusion. Avoid multiple paragraphs. Also, must be avoided merely repeating the findings. Prospects for future research should be identified.
Line 770: According to Figure 1, M9316 had the highest CSI. The results must be revised.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Moderate editing of English language required
Author Response
Please, see the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The Authors have improved the manuscript and addressed my comments.
In the methodology, add the treatments in following order:
1- Control irrigation condition and Ambient CO2 concentration.
2- Control irrigation condition and Elevated CO2 concentration.
3- Water stress condition and Ambient CO2 concentration.
4- Water stress condition and Elevated CO2 concentration.
Minor English editing is required.
Author Response
Thank you for your comment. Treatment description was added in the material and methods section (lines 113-118)
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors improved the manuscript and the most of concerns have been satisfactorily addressed. However, still, an important issue remained. I suggested in the previous version please add a comparison of all treatment compounds and in contrast, the comparison of simple effects must be removed because their information did not contain correct information. The authors, fortunately, removed the Table. But They did not add the main Table containing a comparison of all treatment compounds. the problem is when a reader is interested in knowing for example if a variety such as Goharan for a trait (for example CAT..) under Ambient and control conditions had a significant difference with Goharan under Ambient and stress conditions? and many other triple comparisons that are missed in the text.
It is emphasized again due to the significant interaction effects, you have to add a complete Table. Tables 3 and 4 are not sufficient in contrast are incomplete.
The authors stated that removing Tables 3 and 4 "removing them will cause the loss of part of the article's information". Yes, but you were recommended to add an overall treatment compounds comparison ( that you did not add) instead of those Tables.
Minor editing of English language required
Author Response
Thank you for your valuable comments. Triple comparison data was added as Supplementary Table S1. A brief description was added in the manuscript (lines 358-360).
