Insights into Cottonseed Cultivar Identification Using Raman Spectroscopy and Explainable Machine Learning

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript describes about an instrumental and an analytical tools for identification of different cottonseeds. Impressive analytical tools presented demonstrated the capability of distinguishing the very similar Raman spectra of different cottonseed types for classification purposes. 

Q1; What is the resolution of the spectrometer?

Q2: Are the average spectra of 20 seeds presented here for each type? 

Q3: How many spectra recorded per seed?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to express our sincere appreciation for all of your valuable feedback. In this revision, we have addressed all of your comments. In the attachment, our point-by-point responses to the queries raised by you are listed. We hope the revised manuscript is satisfactory. Once again, we thank you for all your time and assistance on this manuscript.

Your sincerely,

Nannan Zhang
On behalf of all the co-authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

agriculture-2301098: This manuscript is interesting, but some issues must be improved before publication.

1) Lines 61-67: Raman spectroscopy should be explained the general principal for general readers to understand what is it.

2) Lines 68-69: The examples of applying ML in the other proposes must be mentioned, which can elaborate the importance of ML. For example, in land cover classification, smart farm, so on. Please see these papers. [Comparing Four Machine Learning Algorithms for Land Cover Classification in Gold Mining: A Case Study of Kyaukpahto Gold Mine, Northern Myanmar. Sustainability 2022. 14, 10754.] [Machine Learning Applications on Agricultural Datasets for Smart Farm Enhancement. Machines. 2018; 6(3):38.].

3) Lines 96-97: Why these three cottonseed cultivars were studied? Please explain more details.

 

4) Lines170-188: Could you provide the formula / equation of ML algorithms in this study?

5) Figure 1 is very good and easy to understand. Well done!

6) Figure 2: Could you add the scale? It is a bit difficult to guess the size of cottonseed.

7) Figure 4 (d): Please improve the resolution of label text, they are unclear (PC1, PC2, PC3).

8) Line 484: Delete “In conclusion”

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

Thank you for offering us an opportunity to improve the quality of our submitted manuscript (agriculture-2301098). We appreciated very much your constructive and insightful comments. In the attachment, our point-by-point responses to the queries raised by you are listed. We tried our best to improve the manuscript and we appreciate for your warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

 

Your sincerely,

 

Nannan Zhang

On behalf of all the co-authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Accept in present form.