Evaluation of Wheat Genotypes under Water Regimes Using Hyperspectral Reflectance and Agro-Physiological Parameters via Genotype by Yield*Trait Approaches in Sakha Station, Delta, Egypt

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

After reading the manuscript entitled: Hyperspectral reflectance and physiological parameters to select drought-tolerant wheat genotypes evalu-ated in contrasting water regimes using genotype by yield*trait biplots, by Mohamed A. Darwish , Ahmed F Elkot , Ahmed M. S. Elfanah , Adel I. Selim , Mohamed M. M. Yassin , Elsayed A. Abo-Marzoka , Maher A El-Maghraby , Nazih Y. Rebouh, Abdelraouf M. Ali I make my considerations.The manuscript is relevant, but I point out some issues that I consider important and that greatly hindered the reading.

 The manuscript analyzes many genotypes, parameters, acronyms, figures, and tables, which makes the manuscript long, complex, and with little understanding of what it was and how it was researched.

I read it several times to understand what the authors meant, because the sentences
in addition to being long, with long paragraphs, English is not good, confusing.

My suggestion is that authors reduce the text, introduction, and images, restricting
themselves to the main highlights. I believe that the figures can be united in two
frames. The title needs to be better worked and the keywords changed.
The results section is very extensive and authors must present them directly.
The only section that the authors should strive to expand is the discussion, with all
parameters analyzed.

I read it several times to understand what the authors meant, because the sentences in addition to being long, with long paragraphs, English is not good, confusing.

Author Response

Dear respect Reviewer 1,

Thank you for your notes. We highly appreciate your insightful and helpful comments on our manuscript. We carefully improved the manuscript and we hope that we satisfactorily referred to your comments. For clarity, we provided a point-by-point response to your comments. We highlighted the revised sections with a Yellow color

with best regards

Abdelraouf Ali

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors

Your work dealing with the determination of the best drought tolerant wheat genotype could be of interest for the readers, but I found your paper almost impossible to read and follow correctly. As you stated in the introduction you wanted to evaluate the 50 genotypes under different water regimes and estimate GYT graphically.  The two years x 2 irrigation regimes in an alpha lattice design seems a good plan but you complicated the results in a way that is impossible to understand your paper. First, the English is not clear, many sentences are difficult to understand, and the statistical analysis chapter is very complicated. An example is lines 334-336. Which is the meaning of this sentence? Where are the data you are wrinting about (PCI 56.75 and 42.91?) and the meaning of 99.66% computed from each other? It is very difficult for me to help you to improve your paper. Seems to me that you wanted to show all your data in the most complicated way. Too many radars, too many PC graphs (figure 6 and 7 are the same?). Figure 9 is useless and the error bars are missing, and you should put a table but table tables 8 and 9 are useless and maybe you should put the data as additional material and not in the main text. The main graphical finding such as the genotype 12 in fig 3 is impossible to see (the number 12 is lost somewhere inside the cloud of the other numbers). The discussion chapter contains a lot of repetitions. My suggestion is to simplify the exposition of the data not separating the years. Showing in table or a single radar chart or two charts but in the same single figure the main important trait for the selection. Then mean graphical GYT and ANOVA table but considering all the variable together: watering regime and year. ANOVA must be applied in the correct way and you should put indices, year, treatment in the system. I suggest showing all the original data now in tables 8, 9 and figure 9 as supplemental material. Rewrite all the paper in a good English revised by a professional service. I am sorry but your paper is not ready for publication in this form in my opinion. You have the data but you need to reconsider an elegant, simple way to show only the main results in an appropriate form reducind the useles information. the researchers need to know: did they find differences among years and treatments? which are the paramenters more usefull for selecting the best genotype considering the whole experiment (not single part of it)?  

I am very sorry, but I found very difficult to follow the writing and many sentences are difficult to understand. They are too many to underline. The sentence at lines 222-225; 238-245; 261-262; 334-336; 550-552; 566-567...But all the statistical analysis chapter is complicated to follow and understand. There are also a lot of misspelled words. Please use a good corrector to select all the wrong words inside the text.

Author Response

Dear respect Reviewer 1,

Thank you for your notes. We highly appreciate your insightful and helpful comments on our manuscript. We carefully improved the manuscript and we hope that we satisfactorily referred to your comments. For clarity, we provided a point-by-point response to your comments. We highlighted the revised sections with a Green color

with best regards

Abdelraouf Massoud Ali

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript  report researches aimed to associate numerous agronomic, physiological and physical (optical traits of leaves) traits with drought tolerance of wheat. A large number of genotypes and features are taken under consideration. The authors use also interesting statistical tools e.g. GGE biplots, which altogether are the strong side of the study. Authors made also the ranks of the parameters to evaluate their usefulness as a predictors of tolerance. The authors performed also interesting analysis (using anova and GGE biplots) of geneotype x environment interaction.

 

However, I can not find contribution to the general agriculture apart from indicating that some traits correspond to genotype tolerance more or less. This should be emphasised in the manuscript.

 

The manuscript is to much extended and could be more concise.

Presentation of data in form of multiple tables make the manuscript reception not easy.

Some part of data could be transferred to a supplementary, and other presented graphically if possible instead of tables.

Data, where statististics is not attached are of low value since we can not state if data differ significantly or not ( e.g. Fig. 9)

Caption for figures with The “which-won-where” view of the GGE biplot based could be written more correctly (See for example Yan et al. 2007)

Fig. 8 The  type/methods of correlation calculations should be given (Pearson?)

Labels are overlapped in many plot that make them illegible .

In tables with anova results: what means the values ? (apart from df, that is explained)

Physical units should be given in plots/captions where applicable.

Parametrs used could be better characterized, not only definition but also they significance for understanding plant properties.

English and edition of manuscript should be markedly improved

Author Response

Dear respect Reviewer3,

Thank you for your notes. We highly appreciate your insightful and helpful comments on our manuscript. We carefully improved the manuscript and we hope that we satisfactorily referred to your comments. For clarity, we provided a point-by-point response to your comments. We highlighted the revised sections with a Magenta color

With best regards

Abdelraouf M Ali

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have made a very nice change to the manuscript. They were attentive to the suggestions made, making the manuscript clearer.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript has been significantly improved so I can recomment it for publication. However, the quality of figures could be still improved.