The Vigor of Seed Potatoes from Organic and Conventional Systems
, Beata Feledyn-Szewczyk 2 and Krzysztof Jończyk 2Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study will design and caried out. However, some parts of this article needs more improvements such data in table were the averages of the three years results or what?
Additionally, I have some line specific comments below indicating where more detail could be provided.
· Line 3: This sentence must be rewritten again.
· Line 4: Remove "i.e." since you only compared the two systems.
· Line 88: Remove "i.e." and rewrite the sentence.
· Line 96: Remove "i.e." and change "20°C" to 20-22 °C.
· Table 2 : I would like to know the high and low temperature.
· Was the organic fertilizer analyzed?
· Conclusions are not clear just repeated the results section. Make a statement here as I was expecting to read.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
In this study, authors studied the effect of different (organic and conventional) potato growing systems on the vigor of resulted tubers and on the development of 2nd generation plants. In general, the results indicate the “organic” tubers are inferior to the “conventional” ones in relation to a number of vigor-associated parameters as well as in parameters reflecting the development and productivity of plants grown from these tubers. The results show rather negative effect of the demand to use organic seed tubers for potato production, since even in the case of a conventional system with chemical treatments, plants grown from such tubers provide lower productivity.
Though the study includes a lot of results, their presentation, especially in Tables 5-7, requires some improvements (see comments below) and causes some questions due to the presence of several factors influencing on the results. The “Materials and Methods” section also requires some corrections and enlargement since does not give a clear understanding of experiments.
A small language editing is required, though the text is quite understandable.
COMMENTS:
Abstract
Line 22: “The differences in the of individual cultivars…” - please, check as it seems you omit some words after “in the”.
Materials and methods
Table 1: please add information about the number of fungicidal treatments for conventional scheme. Were there four treatments, one for each fungicide, or some of them were used two or more times?
No mentions about Table 2 are found between the mentions of Table 1 (line 89) and Table 3 (line 92). Please, check and correct.
Table 3: why the number of mid early cultivars is twice more than that of other maturity groups? Why did not you include some late cultivars?
Lines 95: please, indicate the harvesting date. Was it October 1? For each of three years of study?
Line 96: why did you store tubers at 20°C, but not at the lower temperatures (which are usually applied for a tuber storage)? Did you do this to stimulate the early sprouting? Please, explain.
Line 103: “one month before replanting…” it would be better to indicate the exact date, as well as the date of replanting.
Line 107: planted on a conventional plantation. Did this mean that the 2nd-generation potato plants were grown in accordance with the conventional scheme, not organic one? If yes, then I consider it would be good to mention the agrotechnical activities applied on this field as well as the date of harvesting.
The years of study were 2018-2020. Which works were performed in each year? Say, in 2018 you planted potato in organic and convenient systems, in 2019 you planted the 2nd generation, and repeated the cycle for 2019-2020? Please, describe this in this section.
Line 122: As far as I know, Statsoft is a US company (Tulsa, Oklahoma). Please, check and correct.
Results
Organic system of potato growing is often inferior to the conventional one in relation to crop protection against diseases. Have you tested “organic” and “conventional” tuber samplings for the presence of viruses? Organic potato has a higher chance to be infected with viruses and accumulate them in tubers; at the same time, these pathogens often provide some impact on the sprouting terms and sprout mass and length.
Table 4: What do the numbers in columns mean? For a reader, when he see the column “Length of tuber rest” (by the way, “Duration” would be probably better than “length”), the first thought is that these numbers show the duration of the rest period (in days or months) and so on. However, here we see other values. I would recommend to correct the situation by adding a common title for all columns with results, which would explain what are these number mean. The same is for Table 6.
Line 142: since you give some data from the Table 5, I consider you should mention this table here.
Table 5:
- “MEan for system”. Please, correct.
- Also, give a note explaining the use of letters a, b, A, and B. How did you use small letters (do they indicate the difference between different cultivars within the same system, between the same cultivar in different systems, between the systems, etc.?)
- Why for the “Length of tuber rest” parameters you write “a” for all data, indicating the difference between then is insignificant, but then put “B” for the mean conventional data. It looks strange. I suppose you simply used letter designations separately for organic and conventional results, so they should not be compared between themselves; in this case, I would strongly recommend to make the corresponding explanation in the note to avoid misunderstanding. When a reader sees a column of numbers with the same letter, it is automatically considered that all of them belong to the same group of values… The same comment is for Table 6.
- The “Length of tuber rest” column, section “Conventional”: 28.0 days for Lawenda and 54.6 days for Otolia mean almost twofold difference, almost a month. At the same time, this difference is considered to be insignificant (both have the “a” index). Why?? The same situation is presented for other parameters (say, 45 and 78% of sprouting eyes in “conventional” section, 3.0 and 14.3 cm (convenient) or 1.3 and 8.4 cm (organic) of the length of the longest sprout). Were the data spreads really so high?
- Another question: is it correct to calculate the mean for system in relation to the “Length of tuber rest”, “Sprout length” and “Sprout mass” parameters if you use cultivars differing in their maturity group, i.e., differing in the rate and intensity of physiological processes determining these parameters?? Please, explain why you think it is correct. Instead, it would make sense to calculate means within each maturity group for each system.
- Not all numbers in the table have letter designations. Why? The same is for Table 6.
- “Sprouts mass” column: please, check the letter designation of the significance of differences. Let’s take the “organic” section. We have eight cultivars, i.e., eight numbers. Among them, we have one “a”, two “ab”, and five “abc”.
2.2 a
2.8 ab
3.1 ab
3.3 abc
3.3 abc
4.0 abc
4.1 abc,
4.4 abc
This is a little strange situation. If pure “a” is 2.2, then how “a” can present for 4.4 in the abc triplet?
The similar situation is for the “Conventional” section. Probably I’m wrong, but check it one more time, please, for letter triplets. Just for a case.
- “Mean for variety” section. What should it show to a reader? The aim of your study was: “The question arises as to how cultivation in the organic system, without the use of chemical means of production, affects the vigor of seed potatoes and whether seed potatoes from the organic system differ in yielding potential compared to those from the conventional system. There is practically no research on this issue. Therefore, the aim of the work is to answer these questions.” Therefore, you planned to compare organic and conventional systems in their effect on some parameters characterizing the vigor of different potato varieties. Why, in this case, you calculate means for the same cultivar between these two systems? It is completely incorrect.
Table 8:
- again, it would be correct to show mean values separately for different maturity groups.
- is it correct to give the data averaged not only across cultivars (not maturity groups), but also across two systems?
- Why you showed data only for three parameters including one from the 2nd generation of tubers? If the year-by-year difference between other parameters was insignificant, then you should mention it in the text and reflect in the title of the table.
Discussion
Line 210: here you use the phrase “dormancy period” (which is correct), but in the results you used “tuber rest”. It is necessary to unify the terminology. I would recommend to use “dormancy period” across the text as it is more common.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors had a good job on the effects of organic and conventional production systems on the production of potato.
There are a few small points to fix.
“Table 4“ should be moved from Line 135 to line 128.
It is better to combine the three paragraphs from line 140 to line 157.
Line 140 It is better to start the paragraph with “As shown in Table 5,”
Line 142 Delete “from the zero date, i.e. 1.10”.
Table 5, please indicate the meaning of different letters following the values.
Line 161-163 It was noted that the yield of tubers per plant was not significantly different with p = 0.054.
Line 165 Delete “only’.
It is better to combine the two paragraphs from line 174 to line 189.
Line 174 It is better to start the paragraph with “As shown in Table 7,”
Line 176 46.2%
Table 7 and Table 8, please indicate the meaning of different letters following the values
Line 195-196 The percentage of plant emergence was not significantly different as indicated in Table 8.
Line 197-198 It is not good to say “the highest in 2019” as the share of eyes growing into sprouts was not significantly different between 2019 and 2020 as shown in Table 8.
Line 198-199 It is not good to say “the number of plants from planted seed potatoes in relation to their total number was highest in the year 2018” as the percent of emerged plants was not significantly different as shown in Table 8.
Throughout the section of Discussion, please show the source of data (results), i.e. which Table.
Line 218 “large deficiencies?”-It should be “low number of ”.
Line 230-232 Please cite a reference here.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
In general, authors answered the most of the comments, but I still have some minor comments.
"In the text there is a reference to Table 2, but later on, it refers to the weather conditions prevailing during the growing season." - However, the general rule is that you should mention tables and figures in the text in the order of their appearing in the text. Now you first mention Table 3 (line 93) prior Table 2 (line 113). Please, correct. The easiest way to do it is to interchange Tables 2 and 3.
Line 107- As described in the Material and Methods section, potatoes in the first year were grown in two production systems: organic and conventional. After harvesting, the physiological state of tuber from both systems was assessed and planted on a conventional plantation where such parameters as the percentage of emergence, number of stems, tuber yield and its structure were assessed. In the following year was the same. - OK, but it would be good to mention this in the Materials and Methods to make it more clear. Just add the phrase that all pesticide treatments and other activities on a conventional field in the second year were the same as those mentioned for the first year. It would also be good to make more clear explanation of the scheme of experiment (2018-2019 was the first two-year cycle (organic + conventional -> conventional) and 2019-2020 was the second cycle).
Table 5: I would still recommend to add to the table note information about the difference between the small and capital letters, i.e., for which statistics/differences you used small ones and for which - capital ones. The current note does not explain this for readers.
The Reviewer has doubts whether the answer was given to the question asked at the beginning: how cultivation in the organic system, without the use of chemical means of production, affects the vigor of seed potatoes. Well, yes, most of the characteristics of seed potatoes' vigor were significantly weaker in relation to seed potatoes from an organic plantation. This was confirmed by statistical analyzes. Additionally, in the case of some traits, varietal differentiation was confirmed, but the basic question was answered. - No, you did not understand my comment. I meant that if the main purpose of the study is a comparison of vigor of tubers grown under conventional and organic systems, then it is logical to compare mean values obtained for tubers/plants grown under these two systems. But what do you want to show by averaging of these parameters between these two systems? If I understand correctly, "Mean for variety" represents an average for the results obtained for the same variety under organic and conventional conditions. What is the scientific and practical sense of such averaging and its value for the purpose of the study and also for readers?
Table 8 - You did not commented my question: Why you showed data only for three parameters including one from the 2nd generation of tubers? If the year-by-year difference between other parameters was insignificant, then you should mention it in the text and reflect in the title of the table. Since you studied more indices (Tables 5 and 7), it would be good to explain in the text why you show in Table 8 only three of them and do not show other ones. Say, these three indices showed the maximum year-by-year differentiation, while other did not. Just add explanation to the text.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
