Optimal Harvest Time for Preventing Hot Pepper Seed Browning during Cold Storage Is Associated with Seed Maturity

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Editor, in the manuscript agriculture-990351 studied seed browning during cold storage in hot pepper fruits harvested at different developmental stage, in order to find out the optimal harvest time for preventing this chilling injury symptom. Results provide interesting information showing that fruit harvest 35 days after flowering (DAF) showed low seed browning which was related with full seed coat development. The following comments should be considered.

- Consider modified the tittle to something like “Optimal harvest time for preventing hot pepper seed browning during cold storage is associated with seed maturity”

- Line 25-26: Unclear sentence. Consider rewriting as “The endosperm was separated from the seed coat….”

- Line 34: It should be “chilling” instead of “hilling”

- Lines 41-44: Authors are talking about seed browning CI in pepper fruit but references 9 and 12 are about strawberry and apple fruits ant in turn, they are not appropriate to support these statements.

- Lines 77-78: Storage time and temperature provided in this sentence does not agree with figure legends or tables. Please, clarify.

- In material and methods section, it should be clarified if each seed sample was obtained from a single fruit and how many samples were used for each sampling date.

- Line 117: Was this supernatant also used for phenolic quantification?

- Line 170: Consider adding “up to 45 DAF” after “.. in harvest time”

- Line 182: Figure 1B should be cited after “storage.”

- Line 191-195: Figures 1A and 1B should be cited.

- Line 198: These linear correlations are not shown in Figure 1.

- Line 224: It should be “the lowest” instead of “the highest” according to data on Table 2.

- Line 237: It should be Table 2 instead of Table 3.

- Line 239: These correlations should be performed and provided in order to support this statement.

- Line 240: Results on Table 3 about antioxidant activity and phenolic content on pepper pericarp have not been commented in the text. Probably, they are not useful in this manuscript and then, table 3 should be erased.

- Lines 256-257: Unclear sentence. Do you mean that “antioxidant gene expression was up-regulated in immature seed”?

- Lines 2583-289: In these previous papers cell wall degrading enzymes were evaluated on fruit pericarp. Authors are assuming that pericarp fruit softening and degradation of cell wall on coat seed cells as a consequence of CI are similar processes occurring simultaneously. This issue should be clarified.

- Line 284: Consider re-writing as “… 25 DAF was significantly higher…”

- Figure 3: Letters from A to J should be added to images provides on figure 3 as well as to figure legend.

- Line 327: Consider changing “highly” to “negatively”

- Lines 329-332: Uncomplete sentence. Consider adding “by harvesting fruits later than 35 DAF.”

Hot pepper fruit development could be different depending on agricultural and environmental conditions. Thus, another final recommendation for harvesting based on a morphological trait easily evaluable for growers, apart from 35 DAF, could be useful for practical purposed.

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript is explaining the chilling injury in tot pepper seeds while in cold storage and how to avoid it considering the time of fruit harvest. The manuscript is well-written, well-prepared and illustrated. Statistical analysis of the experimental date was performed accurately but needs to add some more details (see my comments).

Line 2-4: Please edit and use upper case for each highlighted letter

How about a shorter title:

Optimal Harvest Time to Avoid Chilling Injury of Hot Pepper Seeds During Cold Storage

Line 18 and 19: Fruits

Line 20: within 7 days or within a week of cold storage.

Line 29: Please edit the font and size for harvest time

Line 72, 98 and 113 and ...: Please follow the guidelines and use upper case for each word in tile, subtitle and subheadings of each section.

Line 73: If you grown the plants from the seed please mention the company that you purchased the seeds and grown the seedlings in which condition such as directly plant them in what type of pot and soil...

Line 105: please be clear and explain the sample taken from which part of each fruit for redness or color 

Line 111: CI is chilling injury and showing the seed browning in parentheses seems line it is an abbreviation of CI which is not, Please edit as follow or find another way to present the formula

CI index (Seed browning index) =

Line 164: Data were passed the normality test and variance homogeneity test before subjecting to ANOVA test? Please explain

Line 304 Please add the scale bar 500 Mm for picture of 15DAF

 

 

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf