Hot Water Treatment as a Quarantine Measure for Controlling Pratylenchus penetrans Cobb in Syngonium podophyllum Schott and Perilla frutescens Britton

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript entitled 'Hot water treatment as a quarantine measure for controlling Pratylenchus penetrans in Syngonium podophyllum and Perilla frutescens' provides practical and quality results of the use of hot water to control Pratylenchus penentrans in root tissue. The manuscript was well written. Editing and content suggestions are provide.

Lines 16-17        Redo the sentence so information is stated correctly. LT99 is the time at which 99% lethality is achieved. The mortality rate is equivalent to the probit slope parameter, which is not presented in the abstract.

Lines 47-50        Sentence is confusing so I may not understand the author's intention. Suggestion: Period after infestants and start new sentence. 'Thus, for these plants to be accepted into Korea, phytosanitary treatments would be required to eliminate plant infestations of Pratylenchus spp.'

Line 61                 Insert a name of the documents: quarantine inspection protocols (or guidelines, documents, etc.).

Line 69                 Change to: foliage plants and major hosts of P. penetrans in Korea, respectively.

Line 79                 A morphological description of the nematode should be provided as confirmation to the reader that the nematode was correctly identified.

Line 89                 State size of test tube and total volume of water per test tube.

Line 91                 Change to: injected into

Lines 134-139   Describe the control treatment.

Line 144              Describe the primary probit parameters so readers can better understand information in the Results section. Define the 'LT##' and slope parameters.

Table 1                 Define the 'LT##' acronym, either in the caption or in a footnote.

Table 2                 Change to: in the roots of Perilla

Lines 182-183   Delete the word 'rate'. Mortality is being used as a discrete value at a defined time and not as a rate value, so usage of mortality rate isn't correct. The only place mortality rate would be meaningful is in explaining probit slope parameters, and that's not relevant to how the information is presented.

Figure 3               Change to: podphyllum roots following

Figure 5               Based on plant growth, it looks as if 5 min or more of heat exposure promoted plant growth compared to the control. Although this is not detrimental, some level of information should be given to acknowledge data presented in the figure. 

Table 3                 This table is confusing. The column heading of 'Time' doesn't appear to fit the values (e.g. 38.6, 18.7, etc.). The caption states increasing rate, but this doesn't look like a rate value. I assume it is the percent increase in plant weight over 1 month. State the information appropriately.

Line 213              Delete the comma after the bracket.

Lines248-251    Comment should be added relative to the increase in variability with the larger root diameters, thus explain whether thermotherapy calculated for a a mean root diameter would adequately achieve leathality of nematodes in thicker root diameters. This would be important for certifying that phytosanitary criteria had been met.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I have no additional comments. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Agriculture-2931347

Reviwer 1.

Hot water treatment as a quarantine measure for controlling Pratylenchus penetrans in Syngonium podophyllum and Perilla frutescens

The study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of Hot water treatment as a quarantine measure for controlling the plant parasitic nematode Pratylenchus penetrans in Syngonium podophyllum and Perilla frutescens

Although the manuscript does not bring news to the control of nematodes in plant tissues, the results presented could be applied to the eradication of the nematode Pratylenchus penetrans in the plants studied. The text needs minor repairs.

Some necessary corrections were highlighted in the pdf text.

Materials and Methods

2.4 and 2.5 - Information is missing.

In 2.4 it is not clear whether the plants used in the test were infected plants originating from the Quarantine Service, or whether they were previously inoculated plants. If applicable, inform the amount of inoculum and how many days after inoculation the plants were subjected to treatments. If infected plants were made available by the Quarantine Service, it becomes difficult to assess the uniformity of infection of the plants, possibly including plants with the absence of nematodes in the roots. How many plants were used per treatment?

2.5 - How many plants were used per treatment?

Results

Tables 1, 2 and 3 need to become self-explanatory, as highlighted in the manuscript.

References

As highlighted in the manuscript, Bibliographic references require corrections. Some are incomplete and in several the scientific names have not been italized.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Mostly appropriate, needs minor repairs as highlighted in the text.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review remarks on the manuscript entitled: “Hot Water Treatment as a Quarantine Measure for Controlling Pratylenchus penetrans in Syngonium podophyllum and Perilla frutescens”. This publication describes a hot water treatment to control tomato root-knot nematodes. Pratylenchus penetrans exhibits a broad host range. The effect P. penetrans on plants makes this research significant. This work would be of interest to nematologists, plant protection specialists, and researchers studying biological control. The experiment has been well conducted, and the overall results are fascinating, so the article is eligible to be published. However, I believe that the manuscript might significantly benefit from more details in the introduction section. I recommend the major revision in the manuscript. All those comments are given below.

Abstract: The authors should include a little more experimental information in the abstract.

Introduction: In the introduction section authors describe about effect of P. penetrans on the S. podophyllum while there is no detail about Perilla frutescens. Please provide some details about the P. frutescens. So, it will be good for the reader to know about this host plant.

Materials and Methods: The Materials and Methods section is very well described.

Results: The authors describe results in very systematic ways. Moreover, the results are good. If possible, please elaborate them a little more.

Figure 5: Please provide the significance differences among different time intervals before immersion and a month after immersion.

Discussion: This section is good; the authors describe their findings in the light of previous studies. Please provide more details related to hot water treatment to control P. penetrans.

In the conclusion paragraph, please summarized the findings of this study.

References: The sentence case in the title of every reference should be the uniform. Moreover, the scientific names should be in italics.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors deal with all comments carefully, now the manuscript is acceptable for publication.

Author Response

Thank you for your suggestion.