Photosynthetic Efficiency and Antioxidative Response of Soybean Exposed to Selective Herbicides: A Field Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript deals with an important topic related to human health. It sheds light on the effects of agricultural herbicides. I think that the manuscript is written in a good scientific style. The authors dealt with the subject in a logical sequence. But in fact, I think that it requires some modifications or additions before it is published

(1) There are only about five references for the other two years, so I hope the authors update the list of references, especially in the past two years.

(2) It is known that soybeans are grown for the production of oils or food, so I was hoping that the researchers would influence the effect of the agricultural pesticide on the final production of seeds.

(3) Adding some pictures of the plant under the influence of the treatments mentioned in the experiment.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

We are grateful for the time and effort in reading the manuscript and for the constructive suggestions. We have carefully read the comments and suggestions. Considering all the proposed changes, we made corrections to our manuscript and answered on Reviewer's questions. The added and changed parts are highlighted in red. We hope that the Reviewer is satisfied with our corrections and hope that she/he will recommend our revised manuscript for publication in the Agriculture, Special issue.

Please, find the list of all changes made attached in the word document.

Kind regards

Selma Mlinarić

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors submitted an interesting study on the effects of herbicide treatment on crop photosynthesis and physiology. The topic is very important, and the results are useful. Despite there are numerous studies analyzing the effects of different herbicides, the study provides novel results addressing the unique combination of crop/herbicide interaction, and the focus of the manuscript is somewhat different to what was published before. Therefore, I consider the study as original and novel.

The manuscript is very well written; the introduction is clear, and it provides a very good background about the topic for the readers. The aims of the study are clearly stated. The graphical level of the presentation of the results is excellent. The differences between the treatments and genotypes are very well emphasized. However, the values of the individual parameters should also be presented (see comments below). The methods were very useful and clearly presented; some small issues are commented on below.

The description of the results is accurate and precise. The discussion is comprehensive and very good. The only issue related to the discussion is that the authors could try to explain the changes observed in terms of modes of action of individual herbicides, which are excellently presented in the introduction, but not so much commented in the discussion.

The conclusions are well supported by the results.

Altogether, the text is very smooth and clear; the manuscript is very precisely prepared with a minimum of mistakes. I consider it a very good manuscript, and I support its acceptance after addressing several comments within Minor revisions.

 

 

Comments:

 

- In Material and Methods, add information about the type, model and producer of the spectrophotometer used in this study.

- In Table 1, the Greek characters for several parameters are missing; only the subscripts are shown. In similar, the Greek characters are missing in some other places in the text, e.g., L.381, L. 416, L. 420.

- L. 192, delete comma “,Mean values..” on the beginning of the sentence.

- The values of the parameters in all the paper  are shown as relative; this is, in general, acceptable, but the real values should be presented as well, for example, as a supplementary file. It should be applied not only for biochemical parameters but also for chlorophyll fluorescence data.

 

- L. 449. the sentence “did not cause to oxidative damage” replace by “did not lead to oxidative damage …” or “did not cause oxidative damage.”

The quality of English is appropriate. Some minor issues should be corrected. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

We are grateful for the time and effort in reading the manuscript and for the constructive suggestions. We have carefully read the comments and suggestions. Considering all the proposed changes, we made corrections to our manuscript and answered on Reviewer's questions. The added and changed parts are highlighted in red. We hope that the Reviewer is satisfied with our corrections and hope that she/he will recommend our revised manuscript for publication in the Agriculture, Special issue.

Please, find the list of all changes made attached in the word document.

Kind regards

Selma Mlinarić

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I would like to thank the authors for their response.