Finding Stable QTL for Plant Height in Super Hybrid Rice
and Yingxin Zhang 1,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This manuscript reports 6 stable QTLs for plant height in RISLs derived from super hybrid rice using a high-density Bin map. In addition, the authors showed pleiotropic effects, such as delayed heading date and enhanced grain yield, of qPH-6 using NILs. However, some points should be revised.
Figures 2 and 3 should be changed to more high resolution.
Total 19 QTLs were identified in this study, not 48 QTLs. Please revise this point.
The first part of the discussion (4.1. Verification of qPH-6) does not discuss qPH-6. I recommend this part move to the introduction or third part of the discussion (4.3) and rearrange to a more logical organization.
Line 49: ‘low nitrogen efficiency’ should be revised to ‘nitrogen efficiency’.
Line 145-146 is not matched with the data. Please check and revise it.
Line 150: ‘unstably’ -> ‘unstable’
Line 240: ‘9.3Kb’ -> ‘9.3Mb’
Line 248-249: The sentence “With PVE ~ 3.45-4.63.” should be revised with the following sentence.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Dear Reviewer:
We appreciate editors and reviewers very much for their positive and constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled “Finding stable QTL for plant height in a super hybrid rice” (ID: agriculture-1523216). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches.
We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in revision model in the paper(in blue). The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing:
Point 1: Figures 2 and 3 should be changed to more high resolution.
Response 1: We have corrected it in the manuscript.
Point 2: Total 19 QTLs were identified in this study, not 48 QTLs. Please revise this point.
Response 2: We have revised ‘48 QTLs’ to ‘19 QTLs’ in the manuscript.
Point 3: The first part of the discussion (4.1. Verification of qPH-6) does not discuss qPH-6. I recommend this part move to the introduction or third part of the discussion (4.3) and rearrange to a more logical organization.
Response 3: I'm sorry for the editing error when we filled in the template, the first part of the discussion (4.1.) is entitled “Plant height is closely correlated with yield in rice”, we have corrected ‘4.1. Verification of qPH-6’ to ‘4.1. Plant height is closely correlated with yield in rice’ in the manuscript.
Point 4: Line 49: ‘low nitrogen efficiency’ should be revised to ‘nitrogen efficiency’.
Response 4: We have revised ‘low nitrogen efficiency’ to ‘nitrogen efficiency’ in the manuscript.
Point 5: Line 145-146 is not matched with the data. Please check and revise it.
Response 5: We have checked and revised ‘chromosome 8’ to ‘chromosome 9’ and editing errors in Table 2 in the manuscript.
Point 6: Line 150: ‘unstably’ -> ‘unstable’
Response 6: We have corrected ‘unstably’ to ’unstable’ in the manuscript.
Point 7: Line 240: ‘9.3Kb’ -> ‘9.3Mb’
Response 7: We have corrected ‘9.3Kb’ to ’9.3Mb’ in the manuscript.
Point 8: Line 248-249: The sentence “With PVE ~ 3.45-4.63.” should be revised with the following sentence.
Response 8: Thank you for your comments, we have combined the sentence “With PVE ~ 3.45-4.63.” with the following to make a sentence in the manuscript.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
The topic of the manuscript is very interesting and the MS is well-structured and organized and also well-presented. I have few points need to be cleared.
1- Authors described that plant height in rice is very important trait for high yield and productivity but there are some cultivars have high height but with low yield and not good seeds. I think it is more suitable to link the height trait with another or other trait/s like root phenotypes, number of tillers, and quality of seeds....
2- From QTL, authors can detect which gene/s that could be responsible for this trait and if the gene/s are known from this study; these gene/s could be used as transgene/s to improve other cultivars by overexpression or not?
3- Line 250: "for future...." the sentence would be restructured.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Dear Reviewer:
We appreciate editors and reviewers very much for their positive and constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled “Finding stable QTL for plant height in a super hybrid rice” (ID: agriculture-1523216). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches.
We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in revision model in the paper(in blue). The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing:
Point 1: Authors described that plant height in rice is very important trait for high yield and productivity but there are some cultivars have high height but with low yield and not good seeds. I think it is more suitable to link the height trait with another or other trait/s like root phenotypes, number of tillers, and quality of seeds....
Response 1: Thank you for your valuable question. Grain yield is the product of harvest index (HI) and biomass. As HI has already reached a very high level (above 0.5), further improvement of the rice yield ceiling should rely on an increase in biomass. From a morphological viewpoint, increasing plant height is an effective and feasible way to increase biomass (Yuan 2017). In addition, As Reviewer thank that rice grain yield is affected by grain weight, grain number per panicle, and effective tiller number (Li et al. 2021)
Point 2: From QTL, authors can detect which gene/s that could be responsible for this trait and if the gene/s are known from this study; these gene/s could be used as transgene/s to improve other cultivars by overexpression or not?
Response 2: Thank you for your valuable question. Six QTLs (qPH-1a, qPH-1b, qPH-2b, qPH-3b, qPH-6, and qPH-7b) could be responsible for plant height and overlapped with QTLs for plant height previously reported (Table 4.), but only qPH-1a and qPH-3b overlap with known genes sd1, OsGA20ox1 respectively, the qPH-6 could be responsible for plant height and yield traits. After further mapping, qPH-6 could be used as transgenes to improve other cultivars by overexpression.
Point 3: Line 250: "for future...." the sentence would be restructured.
Response 3: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have restructured the sentence "for future...." to “With important agronomic traits, qPH-6 merits further examination. These QTLs for plant height provide important application value for molecular breeding in rice.”
REFERENCES:
Yuan, L.P. Progress in super-hybrid rice breeding. Crop Journal, 2017, 5, 100-102.
Li, G.M.; Tang, J.Y.; Zheng, J.K.; Chu, C.C. Exploration of rice yield potential: Decoding agronomic and physiological traits. The Crop Journal, 2021, 9, 577-589.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
