The Effect of Drip Irrigation Quota on Biochemical Activities and Yield-Related Traits in Different Drought-Tolerant Maize Varieties
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This article examines how different water levels affect the grain yield of two maize varieties. The study is well-prepared and adequately discusses the results, but some minor modifications are needed to improve it further.
1. What does "CK" stand for in the name of the treatment?
2. The introduction section should have a global focus rather than being location-specific.
3. Please include references in lines 75 to 80 that support your idea.
4. Please provide additional details about the variety used, such as the average required Growing Degree Days (GDD) or the average length of phenological stages.
5. The Overview of the experimental site section is missing information about the precipitation amount in the studied area.
6. Please mention the average temperature amount along with the standard deviation (STD) in line 115.
7. In section 2.4.2 of the Materials and Methods, please mention that the measurements took place over two years.
8. The captions for Table 3, Figure 7, and Table 6 are incorrect.
9. In the Results and Discussion section, provide a more detailed description of how the two studied years influenced the results. What is the reason behind the differences observed between the two years? (Line 209)
10. Use consistent citation formatting throughout the manuscript, including on line 402.
Generally, the English in the article is good, but there is a need for minor editing.
Author Response
- What does "CK" stand for in the name of the treatment?
Answer: We have added a description of CK in the materials and methods.
- The introduction section should have a global focus rather than being location-specific.
Answer: We have revised the introduction section to focus on the global situation.
- Please include references in lines 75 to 80 that support your idea.
Answer: Relevant reference has been added to support our idea in lines 75 to 80.
- Please provide additional details about the variety used, such as the average required Growing Degree Days (GDD) or the average length of phenological stages.
Answer: We have added GDD for two maize varieties in section 2.1.
- The Overview of the experimental site section is missing information about the precipitation amount in the studied area.
Answer: We have added the precipitation amount in section 2.2.
- Please mention the average temperature amount along with the standard deviation (STD) in line 115.
Answer: We have added the standard deviation (STD) of average temperature amount in section 2.2.
- In section 2.4.2 of the Materials and Methods, please mention that the measurements took place over two years.
Answer: We have added the relevant descriptions in section 2.4.2.
- The captions for Table 3, Figure 7, and Table 6 are incorrect.
Answer: We have made modifications to the captions of Table 3, Figure 7, and Table 6.
- In the Results and Discussion section, provide a more detailed description of how the two studied years influenced the results. What is the reason behind the differences observed between the two years? (Line 209)
Answer: We have made modifications to the description here and discussed the differences in changes over the past two years.
- Use consistent citation formatting throughout the manuscript, including on line 402.
Answer: We have standardized the citation format.
Reviewer 2 Report
Manuscript title "Effect of drip irrigation quota on grain yield formation of different drought-tolerant maize varieties" seems interesting and have scientific significance with prospect to climate change scenario. Author evaluate the two contrasting genotypes under different drip irrigation treatments and understand the impact of water defiency on crop health, biochemical, garin and yield-related traits. I have some concerns, suggestions for further improvement the research article.
1: Change the manuscript title that covers the whole theme of research and make attractive for readers.
2: In the abstract provide the significance and need of this research work in 1-2 sentences.
3: Avoide repitation of sentences or sentences with same context as line 24-25 "there was no significant difference between the T1, CK1 and CK2 treatments in the above indicators". and line 26-27 represnts the same results.
4: Key words should be relvant to the research work. Becarefull in writting the key words "bleeding characteristics" ? & photosynthesis is not part of this research.
5: Author provide the old figures about maize area and production as 2015. Please provide the recent information.
6. Modify the lines 91-93 to adress the importance of this study.
7. Describe the experimental design either RCBD, Factorial RCBD, Split plot design etc
8. Actualy, there is three treatments and two genotypes. Author implement the genotypes as treatments, that's not the proper way.
9. In line 105-106 author mentioned the basis of varieties selection for this experminet, but did not provide the literature citation or study from where select the two genotypes. Or author require to provide the data of these 41 lines.
10. Line# 185, "Data statistical analysis" change to "Statistical analysis".
11. Improve the all figures quality and font size, so readers can easily understand and read the text within the figure.
12. Author should use the multivariate analysis i.e., PCA biplot to conclude the results in more better way.
13. Author should provide ANOVA results to understand the genotype, year treatment significance and genotype into year, genotype into treatment, genotype into drip irrigation quota.
Manuscript requires moderate english editing with context to sentence structures and scientific writeup to improve the readability and scientific soundness.
1. Line 58 "Grain filling and filling of maize" repititation of filling word seems inappropriate.
2. Test material change to Plant material. Use scientifc terms to improve the scientific soundness.
3. Experimental site and its fautures
Author Response
1: Change the manuscript title that covers the whole theme of research and make attractive for readers.
Answer: We have changed the title of the manuscript from " Effect of drip irrigation quota on grain yield formation of different drought-tolerant maize varieties" to "Effect of drip irrigation quota on the content of multiple amino acids, sugar, hormones, and yield in the grain of different drought-tolerant maize varieties".
2: In the abstract provide the significance and need of this research work in 1-2 sentences.
Answer: We have added statements regarding the significance and importance of this study to the abstract.
3: Avoide repitation of sentences or sentences with same context as line 24-25 "there was no significant difference between the T1, CK1 and CK2 treatments in the above indicators". and line 26-27 represnts the same results.
Answer: We have removed the duplicate statement section at this location.
4: Key words should be relvant to the research work. Becarefull in writting the key words "bleeding characteristics" ? & photosynthesis is not part of this research.
Answer: We have made modifications to the keywords.
5: Author provide the old figures about maize area and production as 2015. Please provide the recent information.
Answer: We have updated the relevant description and deleted the description of maize production and area due to the suggestion of the other reviewer.
- Modify the lines 91-93 to address the importance of this study.
Answer: We have made modifications to the lines 91-93.
- Describe the experimental design either RCBD, Factorial RCBD, Split plot design etc
Answer: We have added relevant descriptions in section 2.3.
- Actualy, there is three treatments and two genotypes. Author implement the genotypes as treatments, that's not the proper way.
Answer: Actually, at the beginning of the design of this article, two different drought-tolerant maize varieties were used as plant materials, with three irrigation levels set, and the intention was not to treat genotypes as treatments.
- In line 105-106 author mentioned the basis of varieties selection for this experminet, but did not provide the literature citation or study from where select the two genotypes. Or author require to provide the data of these 41 lines.
Answer: We have added relevant literature as a reference in section 2.1.
- Line# 185, "Data statistical analysis" change to "Statistical analysis".
Answer: The title of section 2.5 has been modified.
- Improve the all figures quality and font size, so readers can easily understand and read the text within the figure.
Answer: We have improved the font size and quality of the figures.
- Author should use the multivariate analysis i.e., PCA biplot to conclude the results in more better way.
Answer: We have added the relevant analysis results of the main data in this article after section 3.6 and discussed them.
- Author should provide ANOVA results to understand the genotype, year treatment significance and genotype into year, genotype into treatment, genotype into drip irrigation quota.
Answer: We have added the results of variance analysis in the yield and its components in section 3.6 (Table 5).
Comments on the Quality of English Language
Manuscript requires moderate english editing with context to sentence structures and scientific writeup to improve the readability and scientific soundness.
Answer: We have edited and polished the entire article on the basis of modifications.
- Line 58 "Grain filling and filling of maize" repititation of filling word seems inappropriate.
Answer: We have made modifications here.
- Test material change to Plant material. Use scientifc terms to improve the scientific soundness.
Answer: We have changed to Plant material.
- Experimental site and its features
Answer: We have changed to Experimental site and its features in section 2.2.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
This research article entitled “Effect of drip irrigation quota on the content of multiple amino acids, sugar, hormones, and yield in the grain of different drought-tolerant maize varieties” focused on less explored scientific question. Authors highlights the importance of employing drip irrigation system in drought prone areas, where ground water is not available. But there are still few recommendations to improve the research article before final publication.
1: Title of this research article seems quite wordy, to write each studied trait in title is also not appropriate. I suggest rechange the title as “Effect of drip irrigation quota biochemical activities and yield-related traits in different drought-tolerant maize varieties”.
2: Try to improve the methodology section
a) Change the 2.4 heading “Measurement of biochemical and morphological traits”
b) In statistical methods, author should provide the detail of ANOVA and correlation analysis.
3: ANOVA results is weird. That’s why asked for author to provide the detail ANOVA results as author just write the asterisks to demonstrate the significant or non-significant variation. Provide the degree of freedom and mean square value for each source of variation.
Secondly, how it’s possible if varieties and treatment of particular trait are significant, while their interaction is non-significant. Really? I do not think so. Please thoroughly recheck your results and methodology adopted to perform the ANOVA.
4: Line 491-492 is the repetition of previous sentence.
5: How about the two genotypes response to different irrigations? Either they behave similar or differently? Author did not provide conclusion based on different genotype response.
6: Attached the pdf with accepting the track changes, just highlight your text to understand where changes made.
Author Response
1: Title of this research article seems quite wordy, to write each studied trait in title is also not appropriate. I suggest rechange the title as “Effect of drip irrigation quota biochemical activities and yield-related traits in different drought-tolerant maize varieties”.
Answer: We have made modifications to the title as required.
2: Try to improve the methodology section
- a) Change the 2.4 heading “Measurement of biochemical and morphological traits”
- b) In statistical methods, author should provide the detail of ANOVA and correlation analysis.
Answer: Firstly, we have revised the title of section 2.4, and secondly, we have supplemented section 2.5.
3: ANOVA results is weird. That’s why asked for author to provide the detail ANOVA results as author just write the asterisks to demonstrate the significant or non-significant variation. Provide the degree of freedom and mean square value for each source of variation.
Secondly, how it’s possible if varieties and treatment of particular trait are significant, while their interaction is non-significant. Really? I do not think so. Please thoroughly recheck your results and methodology adopted to perform the ANOVA.
Answer: Firstly, we have provided the degrees of freedom and mean square values of each variation source in the table 5. Secondly, when the above sources of change interact with each other, some results showed that they are not significant, because it can be found in the results that the impact trend of irrigation and year on different varieties is the same, only changing in the numerical values of various indicators.
4: Line 491-492 is the repetition of previous sentence.
Answer: We have made modifications to this section.
5: How about the two genotypes response to different irrigations? Either they behave similar or differently? Author did not provide conclusion based on different genotype response.
Answer: We have added relevant concluding statements in the conclusion section.
6: Attached the pdf with accepting the track changes, just highlight your text to understand where changes made.
Answer: We have accepted the revised parts of the revised draft submitted on August 1st, and now all the modified parts in the text are the content of this revision.
