Meta-Analysis of Influence of Diversity of Parental Forms on Heterosis and Specific Combining Ability of Their Hybrids

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have evaluated the manuscript thoroughly. In general, the paper is written fine but there are some issues, which must be addressed.

1.  Add a hypothesis and clear objectives at the end of the introduction section. Also make it clear the already known information and novel aspect of this study. Please refer and include (https://doi.org/10.1080/15440478.2020.1838996).

2. Explain the methodology with more details

3.  DO not repeat results in the discussion section. Discuss results logically with the help of pertinent literature. Try to correlate the results for better understanding.

4. To improve discussion please read and include (10.3390/agronomy12061310).

5.  Most of the figures are not readable; improve all Figs.

6. Concise the conclusion section. It should be 2-3 meaningful sentences. Delete all introductory and general statements.

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

 

Reviewer #1

Point 1: I have evaluated the manuscript thoroughly. In general, the paper is written fine but there are some issues, which must be addressed.

1. Add a hypothesis and clear objectives at the end of the introduction section. Also make it clear the already known information and novel aspect of this study. Please refer and include (https://doi.org/10.1080/15440478.2020.1838996).

Response: Thank you very much for all your comments. We have taken all the comments into account and hope to make the manuscript even better. We have added the research hypothesis and formulated the objectives of the paper more clearly. In addition, we have clarified already known information and highlighted new aspects of our study. We also thank you for drawing our attention to the publication https://doi.org/10.1080/15440478.2020.1838996, which we have referred to in our manuscript. We have supplemented the manuscript with the text: "Accordingly, the research hypothesis was that phenotypic and genetic variation in parental forms affects the values of heterosis and specific combining ability effects of hybrids obtained from crossing these parental forms. Studies to date tend to focus on analyzing a single population and evaluating breeding parameters such as general combining ability, SCA and heterosis [19]. Less often, phenotypic or genetic variation of parental forms is analyzed in the context of evaluating hybrids obtained by crossing these parental forms [20–24]. Analyses of the determination of the differentiation of parental forms on the values of breeding parameters of hybrids are not usually undertaken. In order to fill the gap in the literature on the subject, we undertook to investigate whether such an influence exists and, if so, what direction it takes."

 

Point 2: Explain the methodology with more details

Response: We supplemented the methodology with more details on the parameters studied.

 

Point 3: DO not repeat results in the discussion section. Discuss results logically with the help of pertinent literature. Try to correlate the results for better understanding.

Response: Thank you very much for your valuable comment. We have corrected the Discussion section. We have discussed the results logically using relevant literature.

 

Point 4: To improve discussion please read and include (10.3390/agronomy12061310).

Response: We have improved the Discussion section. In addition, we have read and cited manuscript 10.3390/agronomy12061310.

 

Point 5: Most of the figures are not readable; improve all Figs.

Response: We have improved the quality of all Figures.

 

Point 6: Concise the conclusion section. It should be 2-3 meaningful sentences. Delete all introductory and general statements.

Response: We corrected Conclusion section. New Conclusion section is: “Genetic variability determines the values of heterosis effects in a very statistically significant way. This influence is directly proportional as to the absolute value of the heterosis effect. Phenotypic diversity also affects the values of the heterosis effect. Phe-notypic variation has a significant impact on SCA values. The results obtained can be a very valuable source of information for breeders in the perspective of conducting selection breeding. As the best parental forms recommended for further inclusion in breeding programs, preference should be given to those with the highest possible genetic variability, with relatively low phenotypic variability.”.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1. The authors should highlight the novel part of the study.

2. The quality of the images should be improved.

3. The overall  findings of the study may be summarized in a separate figures.

4. In the conclusion part, the authors may include the perspective of this study and should indicate how the present study advances our present understanding on the related field of study.

 

 

The manuscript needs overall improvement on the quality of English language used.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

 

Reviewer #2

Point 1: The authors should highlight the novel part of the study.

Response: We highlighted the novel part of the study by adding a paragraph in the Introduction: "Accordingly, the research hypothesis was that phenotypic and genetic variation in parental forms affects the values of heterosis and specific combining ability effects of hybrids obtained from crossing these parental forms. Studies to date tend to focus on analyzing a single population and evaluating breeding parameters such as general combining ability, SCA and heterosis [19]. Less often, phenotypic or genetic variation of parental forms is analyzed in the context of evaluating hybrids obtained by crossing these parental forms [20–24]. Analyses of the determination of the differentiation of parental forms on the values of breeding parameters of hybrids are not usually undertaken. In order to fill the gap in the literature on the subject, we undertook to investigate whether such an influence exists and, if so, what direction it takes."

 

Point 2: The quality of the images should be improved.

Response: We have improved the quality of all Figures.

 

Point 3: The overall  findings of the study may be summarized in a separate figures.

Response: To present the overall results obtained in the implementation of our research in the form of Figures would be a repetition of the presentation of the results contained in Table 3. Therefore, we allow ourselves to leave them in tabular form.

 

Point 4: In the conclusion part, the authors may include the perspective of this study and should indicate how the present study advances our present understanding on the related field of study.

Response: We corrected Conclusion section. New Conclusion section is: “Genetic variability determines the values of heterosis effects in a very statistically significant way. This influence is directly proportional as to the absolute value of the heterosis effect. Phenotypic diversity also affects the values of the heterosis effect. Phe-notypic variation has a significant impact on SCA values. The results obtained can be a very valuable source of information for breeders in the perspective of conducting selection breeding. As the best parental forms recommended for further inclusion in breeding programs, preference should be given to those with the highest possible genetic variability, with relatively low phenotypic variability.”.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Manuscript on "Meta–Analysis of Influence of Diversity of Parental Forms on Heterosis Effect and Specific Combining Ability" is interesting for breeding prospects. I have some questions and suggestions for the improvement of this research paper.

1. As author used the publicly available data, kindly provide the supplementary table (with citatations) to gave better understand the reseach basis.

2. Why author did not consider the general combining ability important factor in hybrid development.

3.  Methodology should be elaborated to gave better understanding to the readers.

4. Results need to wrote in more elobarated way. Figures must have the trend line whcih showed the positive and/or negative correlation among the two factors. 

5. Genetic variation showed negative correlation with hetrosis in figure 1 and table 1. While in conclusion author mentioned "This influence is less significant than that of genetic variation". Please recheck your conclusion statement. 

6. Whats the novel findings of this study?

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

 

Reviewer #3

Point 1: Manuscript on "Meta–Analysis of Influence of Diversity of Parental Forms on Heterosis Effect and Specific Combining Ability" is interesting for breeding prospects. I have some questions and suggestions for the improvement of this research paper.

1. As author used the publicly available data, kindly provide the supplementary table (with citatations) to gave better understand the reseach basis.

Response: Thank you for your very valuable comment. We have supplemented the manuscript by citing the publications from which we created the database. We have included all these publications in the regular manuscript, without creating a file with supplementary material.

 

Point 2: Why author did not consider the general combining ability important factor in hybrid development.

Response: Of course, we agree with the reviewer that general combining ability (GCA) is a very important factor in evaluating the development of hybrids. GCA refers to individual parental forms, and there is no way to compare it to phenotypic and genetic variation, since such is always zero. Why did we not consider general combining ability in our study.

 

Point 3: Methodology should be elaborated to gave better understanding to the readers.

Response: We supplemented the methodology with more details on the parameters studied.

 

Point 4: Results need to wrote in more elobarated way. Figures must have the trend line whcih showed the positive and/or negative correlation among the two factors.

Response: We have improved the Results section. In addition, we supplemented all Figures with trend lines.

 

Point 5: Genetic variation showed negative correlation with hetrosis in figure 1 and table 1. While in conclusion author mentioned "This influence is less significant than that of genetic variation". Please recheck your conclusion statement.

Response: Thank you very much for pointing out the not very precise wording. We have corrected it by changing one of the conclusions to: "Genetic variability determines the values of heterosis effects in a very statistically significant way.".

 

Point 6: Whats the novel findings of this study?

Response: We highlighted the novel part of the study by adding a paragraph in the Introduction: "Accordingly, the research hypothesis was that phenotypic and genetic variation in parental forms affects the values of heterosis and specific combining ability effects of hybrids obtained from crossing these parental forms. Studies to date tend to focus on analyzing a single population and evaluating breeding parameters such as general combining ability, SCA and heterosis [19]. Less often, phenotypic or genetic variation of parental forms is analyzed in the context of evaluating hybrids obtained by crossing these parental forms [20–24]. Analyses of the determination of the differentiation of parental forms on the values of breeding parameters of hybrids are not usually undertaken. In order to fill the gap in the literature on the subject, we undertook to investigate whether such an influence exists and, if so, what direction it takes."

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have responded to the queries raised in the review and revised the manuscript accordingly. I have no other question.

Minor editing of English language would be useful.

Reviewer 3 Report

Author try to improve the manuscript in better way and adress all the questions properly.