Reduced Root Volume at Establishment, Canopy Growth and Fruit Production in ‘Lapins’/‘Colt’ and ‘Regina’/‘Gisela 12’ Sweet Cherry Trees

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 5)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The additions included in the work are sufficient

Author Response

The authors are very pleased with all the comments and efforts in evaluating this paper. We have made the previously suggested changes in four revisions, so we hope the article can be accepted and published by Horticulturae.

Kind regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Your manuscript  was improved significantly, but this form in my opinion is still insufficient for successful publication in Horticulturae.

Unfortunately the introduction you provided is still poor. You gave basic information on growers expectations and  some factors affecting plant material quality. It lacks the relevance of root volume and also more general idea the relevance of whole root system. Please try to dig deeper here, especially trying to give more scientific background.

Material and methods chapter is well improved. Descriptions are more detailed but sometimes still needs to be more specific. See shoots measurement (which part of crown was represented by shoots), etc.

As I previously stated the style of results description and way of discussion appear to be fair. However, without changing the attitude to the experimental layout I cannot  fully assessed the relevance of your outcomes.

Below you will find some further comments which I belive will be helpful in your work improvement.

Line 22-23 did you investigate it in your research presented in this paper?

Line 40-41 number of feather is also one of the key parameter of tree quality.

Line 45-46 there are specific names for fruit trees such as: knip trees, one year old maiden, etc. please use this nomenclature where it is appropriate.

Line 111 results presented in Table 3 show that material that Authors used for establishing plantation were not uniform. In all experimental sites it was the case of one parameter at least (plant height/stem diameter). In my opinion it can affect further results and makes it really difficult to get  reliable conclusions.

Line 128 give more details which shoots were taking into account for mentioned measurements (from the top or bottom of the crown, or maybe from the middle part…)

Line 134 give the model of apparatus you used as you did in further description (line 39-143)

Line 135 please give the name of the method, or if there are more than one method use here please write that it was done according to methods previously “described by Smith et al. [x]”

Line 144 please give more specific description of data analysis you made. Your experiment was quite complex while there were 3 locations, 4 treatments, 2 cultivars/rootstocks, 2 different crown shapes. In my opinion this experiment should be treated as a multifactorial, or you have to divide it into 3 independent trials and describe them separately.

Line 171 caption to Table 3 stated: “different letters indicate significant differences between treatments according to Tukey test…” – should I understand that I can compare presented results within different locations? If not please specify it.

Line 189 Table 4 – why you did not present statistical significance? Describe those results in more details while it looks there are some interesting values e.g for N and K in San Fernando.

Please check if the references list is in line with Horticulturae journal template.

Regards,

Author Response

The authors are very pleased with all the comments and efforts in evaluating this paper. We have made the previously suggested changes in four revisions, so we hope the article can be accepted and published by Horticulturae.

Kind regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear athors,

      Greetings!

       I'm glad my suggestion can help you. But please add the  professional analysis of all the results, and only introducing the experiment results isn’t reasonable.

In the section results, add the words such as "It indicated·······”"It meant······" " In sum·······” and so on after stating the experiment results. Simply stating the changes in the values of the indicators only can't expose the professional meanings.

Author Response

The authors are very pleased with all the comments and efforts in evaluating this paper. We have made the previously suggested changes in four revisions, so we hope the article can be accepted and published by Horticulturae.

Kind regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

thank you for your time and effort for imrpoving presented manuscript. You have improved it a lot from the begining. To be honest I am not 100% satisfied and still standing on a postion that it would be better to treat your experiment as a multifactorial. Despite this I recommend to process your article in further steps  after adressing some minor deficiences.
Please prooferead your paper carefully once again. Uniform name of cultivar and rootsocks used in the text using their officially accepted forms. Make sure that references formating is in line with journal requirements.

Good luck!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your thorough review of our article. We appreciate your comments and the time you have taken to advise us on how to improve our manuscript.

We have taken note of your suggestion to treat the experiment as multifactorial for future consideration.

The study assessed the impact of reduced root volume in nursery plants on their survival, vegetative growth, and fruit productivity after planting. This was done to simulate the loss of roots that occurs when plants are harvested from the ground. Additionally, the study compared these treatments with bagged plants, as growers often believe that bagged plants perform worse after transplanting than those with bare roots.

The study assessed the performance of nursery plants with reduced roots and bagged plants in three orchards situated in varying soil and climatic conditions, and with different agronomic management practices (such as planting density, training system, cultivar, etc.). For this reason, the statistical analysis considered the evaluations in each orchard as independent trials rather than in a multifactorial manner. This is because the characteristics of the plantations were not equivalent, making it impossible to determine whether the differences arose from the treatments or from some factor specific to the orchard.

We have addressed the minor deficiencies noted, including unifying the cultivar name and rootstocks according to officially accepted forms, and ensuring that the format of the references complies with journal requirements.

Your support and guidance were invaluable to us as we worked to improve the quality and consistency of our work. We hope we have met your expectations in this latest revision.

Thank you again for your time and patience. Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Kind regards.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The subject of this paper is interesting and could be of importance to fruit growers and nurseries. The quality of the plant material from the nursery is one of the most important or critical factors for successful fruit production in orchards.

Some comments are given below.

Comments:

Introduction:

For a better understanding of the mean topic of the paper, some words on the current situation/problems of planting of new cherry trees in orchards might be useful for the reader.

Methods:

This is a part of the results (or discussion): In the seasons evaluated, the average air temperature during fruit growth period 66 (September-December) was 16 °C, with the highest thermal accumulation in San Fernando 67 (SF), followed by Chimbarongo (Ch) and Graneros (Gr) (Table 2) [11].

How were the 50% and 25% root volumes calculated/measured?

How was the mineral content of the collected leaves analysed? (method)

Results:

A table of the results with the fruit load is to recommended for better understanding.

Discussion:

Please discuss the significantly higher fruit firmness and SSC content of the BR100 variant by Lapins (Ch) compared the other variants.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript titled "Relevance of initial root volume on growth and productivity of ‘Lapins’/‘Colt’ and ‘Regina’/‘G12’ sweet cherry trees" deals with an interesting topic, though many changes have to be made for the manuscript to merit further review.

My remarks are the follwoing

1. The title should be changed, in order to describe the research done in this manuscript. It is not the initial volume, since the authors trimmed part of the root system. It should be something like 'reduced root system volume' or something like that

2. In the first appearence of G12, please state the full name, i.e. Gisela 12

3. Line 58, were these seedlings? If yes, then the whole research is false.

4. L61, which were the commercial requirements of each orchard? what do you mean and how did you meet these requirements?

5. L80, the trees were not pruned, the root system was.

6. Table 3, at which point was the trunk diameter measured? Furtermore, the same bare rooted plants in Lapins/Colt combination presented differences concerning trunk diameter. This means that the trial started from a different point for each of these plants, which differed not onlyin the root colume but also on the measured variable, i.e. trunk diameter. Since the plants were selected (see line 58, this is a major drawback)

7.The methods in Materials and Methods should be better described (please see the leaf mineral content analysis).

8. The statistical analysis is written to be done by LSD but in tables' footnotes is written Tukey.

9. In Figure 3, the authors did not take into account that there were initially differences among treatments in some of the measured variables, as stated in Table 3. The increment should be better than just the final measurement of each variable. Furthermore, using letters in each sub-graph in Figure 3 would really help.

10. L143, this is wrong, it si not the cultivar that you are testing, it is the combination of cultivar/rootstock, and there were differences in Lapins (Ch).

11. L154-159, the english language should be edited here. Furtermore, the yield of each combination should be presented and statistically analyzed as the yiled strongly influences fruit attributes (a MANCOVA analysis would indicate if there significant effects of yield on fruit indices)

12. L160, this is too superficila. Better discussion is needed.

13. L161, you can not compare data from Ch and from SF regions, as you did not done such a statistical analysis

14. There is not statistical analysis in the results presented in table 5. A fertilization program per each orchard should be presented too. Please also comment on the fact that you have a high concentration of some nutrients in the leaves (i.e. B, Cu etc).

15. L184-185, please review this based on the vigorosity of the rootstocks used here (I would not say that they were moderately to higly vigorous, probably the opposite). See also your own comment in line 197

16. L200, this stands only for one of the two cultivars

17. L225, this is not true, sice they were in the same orchard (and you did not proceed to any statistical analysis to see differences between rochards for the same combination i.e. Lapins/Colt)

The discussion section should be vastly improved as well

Comments on the Quality of English Language

In some points (as stated in my remarks) I feel that the language needs editing (although I am not a native english speaker).

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

            The design of the experiment and the statistical analysis are too

simple, so the innovative results or conclusions are absent.

             The other disadvantages are the following.

             1.      Table 3 the second line needs dividing into 3 sections according to the combination of the different scions/rootstocks.

         2.      In line 112, delete the track of modification.

         3.      The issues on the mineral nutrient needs adding in the section introduction.

         4.      If there is no Check, you had better use the other multiple comparison method but LSD.

         5.      Please add the professional analysis of all the results, and only introducing the experiment results isn’t reasonable.  

         6.      The relationship between the mineral nutrient contents and the growth or the economic indicators of cherry is ignored in the section discussion, but it is very important. Please add it.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The topic taken up by the Authors of the reviewed article is very interesting. In some parts of the world sweet cherries growing is of increasing importance, and research in this area needs to be developed to support more sustainable, efficient and profitable fruit production.

Unfortunately, revision of the presented study showed that preparing this article for the successful publication still needs a lot of effort. As a result I recommend to reject this manuscript with encourage for future submission.

Below I present crucial issues that needs to be improve to lift up the quality of the article.  

The introduction is really poor. Provides only a basic information on growers expectations and  some factors affecting plant material quality without further description linking them with the main topic – the relevance of root volume and also more general idea the relevance of whole root system. The Authors cited only 10 literature positions in this part which shows that they have not prepared it thoroughly.

Material and methods are the second weakest part of this study. Descriptions are too general. See experimental sites, soil type, collecting fruits/leaves (from which part of the crown were samples collected), shoots measurement (which part of crown was represented by shoots). They should be written as detailed as they can play a role of a guide to someone who want to repeat the experiment made by Authors. This is not the case here.

Moreover, the experimental layout is not methodologically sound and need to be rearranged. Authors cannot use one-way ANOVA to compare the effect of root volume of plants grown in different locations/weather conditions (A), with variable soil quality (B), pruned with different ways after planting (C), and formed with different types of crown (D).  This is why the results cannot be described as it is presented in the manuscript. This experiment should be treated as a multifactorial (AxBxCxD), but it needs some other modifications, e.g. excluding resultsfor regina on G12, etc. In my opinion there is not the easy way to improve it without many effort.

The style of describing results and way of discussion appear to be fair. However, there was so many  missing details in methods that interpret them or the conclusions is completely impossible.

Regards,

Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Remarks

1. Why different rootstocks and different planting densities were used. There is no information in the Introduction that would justify such a choice.

2. Soil description is insufficient. Data from each orchard should be tabulated.

3. Please provide characteristics in each orchard - soil granulometric composition, humus content, pH, nutrient content. All of this parameters have an impact on the development of the roots and their architecture. Did the soil in all orchards prepared in the same way before planting the trees?

4. No description of the cultivation treatments (irrigation, fertilization ...). All of this has an impact on the analyzed parameters. Were they the same in all the experimental orchards?

5. How exactly was the root volume determined?

6. Detailed information about the experimental scheme is missing - combinations, control .... This makes it impossible to reproduce the experiment. How many trees were used in the experiment at all? Why the crown forms of trees in different orchards were different?

7. The methodology should be completed. How many trees were measured (growth, yield ... etc.)? How exactly the fruit quality parameters were determined, and on how many fruits? How leaf samples were prepared for further processing? Wchich methodology for performing analyses was used?

8. In the description of the results, the authors do not refer to the effect of root volume at planting on the quality of the harvested fruit and the growth of the aboveground part of thr trees.

9. Does the quality of fruit measured by its diameter from such young trees meet the demands of the dessert fruit market?

10. The Discussion is insufficient. The authors mostly replicate the presented earlier results. The issue of the mineral content of the leaves was practically ignored.

11. There are different research periods in the tables. E.g. 2019/2020 (table 4) or 2018/2019 (table 5).

12. The bibliography should be completed - quantitatively and qualitatively. The dominant items are several years old.

13. The large number of variable factors (rootstock, variety, crown form ...etc.) makes it impossible to draw reliable conclusions.