Spring Freeze Damage of Pecan Bloom: A Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The Article gives a Review of the occurence and susceptability of spring freeze damage in Pecan Trees. Overall a broad overview is provided and the article is written well. However, I personally miss the description of the effects of pruning strategies/ forms as well as of the effects of Irrigation/water status and nutrient management on the susceptability of Pecans to freeze damage. in the subchapter 1.2.5 I was expecting to find more info on Research done on trees of different sizes...

Below the specific comments:

Line 7: Pecan is CERTAINLY NOT the only tree nut native to the Untied States!

Line 26: would either delete woody perennial or trees; trees are by Definition woody and perennial...

Line 74: Surely loosing the entire trees in case of freeze damage during winter is also hamrfull. It is only that the spring freeze damages are more frequent.

Subchapter 1.1: could be written in a more organized way: you first mention the autumn freeze, than you talk about the winter freeze and than the autumn freeze again...It could also be interesting to see some "critical" temperatures at different physiological stages of the pecan.

Subchapeter 1.2: again, maybe mention the critical temperatures from the studies.  

Line 109: what exactly do you mean by abnormal flowers

Line 154: Freeze at positive C ? Surely you inteand to say cold damage

Line 206: The Statement conflicts with the one described in the Figure 1.c

Subchapter 1.2.5: Tree size is not really discussed

Line 228-230: formatting

Line 236: anther

Subchapter 2.2.: Is there no literature with more specific effects on the Juglandoideae available?

Line 319: would remove "Although"

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a nice review on the impact of low temperature on reproductive organs of Carya illinoensis. It also comprises other points such as carbohydrates and bud formation.

I find however somehow elucubrative to use the cases of other cultivated plants (such as chickpea, cherry, Mangifera, et,  that do not seem to share characteristics neither taxonomic nor related to climate) as models for this review. 

Furthermore, a big body of evidence on frost resistance may derive from studies in other Juglandaceae, such as Juglans regia, which seem to me somehow ignored. For example:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2019.04.041

https://doi.org/10.1093/treephys/tpt090 and references therein

and the PhD of Dr. Gracia, available online on: Evaluation of autumn frost resistance in Juglans regia L.  and their derived papers (e.g. https://academic.oup.com/forestscience/article/59/5/559/4583709)

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

2020-10-08 Horticulturae

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/horticulturae/instructions

 

General Impression

 

A thorough review that investigates a wide range of aspects of an important problem.

There is some inconsistency about the location of certain information, and some minor spell/stylistic/formatting checks are required.

 

Language

 

Somewhat lazy with lots of little grammatical and stylistic errors.

Some verb-subject disagreement. Improper introduction of new clauses (“which”, “that”).

The use of apostrophe is not allowed in academic writing.

Sometimes the first letters of words are capitalized for no reason (as in in Lines 61 or 92 for example).

I suggest a thorough spell and grammar check by a native speaker, by someone with long-time experience in academic writing.

 

Structure of the manuscript

 

The structure of the manuscript follows that of a review manuscript. There is the Front Matter (Title, Abstract, Authors list and affiliations, Keywords), the literature review sections and the Back Matter (Acknowledgements, Authors Contribution, Conflict of Interest, References), although there is no Supplementary Material.

 

Title

 

The Title is relevant, although maybe a little bit too generic.

 

Abstract

 

The Abstract is longer than allowed. The Authors should keep it below 200 words.

Unfortunately, the Introduction section is heavily represented, leaving little to no space to the rest of the subsections of the manuscript.

I suggest the Authors re-organize the Abstract and reflect more of their findings (as opposed to presenting the background).

 

Keywords

 

The number of keywords is within the limit and are specific to the manuscript.

The Authors may want to include other keywords such as “bud formation”, “management type”, “carbohydrate transport” or “molecular biology” so as to target a more specific audience with this paper.

 

Introduction

 

Considering that this paper is addressing researchers, extension agents or even well-educated and enthusiastic pecan growers, a majority of the introductory passages must be well-known to them. The Authors may want to reduce the text a bit.

Apart from that, this Introduction clearly states the purpose and importance of the review.

 

Literature Review Sections

 

This is divided to (1) “Effect of freeze on pecans”, (2) “Effect on males and female flowers”, (3) “Carbohydrates and flower bud formation”.

I find these parts are somewhat inconsistent in their content and the formation of the headers as well. This section definitely needs some re-arrangement (I mean the relocation of certain passages or subsections).

In part (1) the title suggests a detailed description of freeze injuries and their impact. However, the Authors present conditions that influence the impact as well. These information are relevant to the manuscript and are important to the subject as well but should be clearly presented as “influencing factors”, or “factors that may determine the severity of the damage”.

In part (2) the various effects of extreme cold temperatures are presented. It is fine until comes a subsection (Line 311) with a heading formatted completely different from the previous one and it also does not have a number. It is called “Damage at cellular and molecular level”. This is again important and relevant but should be re-located and the heading re-formatted to keep consistency throughout the manuscript.

In part (3), there are subsections without no numbering and the formatting is again, inconsistent.

 

Conclusions

 

This section is optional, but I am content with having this section within this manuscript.

This section summarizes the findings of the review.

I like how the Authors point out that despite the newest findings due to modern technology, spring freeze will always be a problem in pecan production.

However, this ending feels really pessimistic, giving a sad overall outcome, therefore I would like to ask the Authors to suggest further directions of research to find what plant breeding, cultivation protocol or management practices are there to alleviate the problem.

 

References

 

The formatting of this section complies with the requirements.

The number of references is satisfactory.

The majority of the references were published after 2000, so it means that the Authors follow the most up to date information on their subject.

The number of self-references is low.

A relatively high percent, about 10% of the references are not research papers. References 4, 5, 8, 24, 32, 33, 35, 38, 40, 41 and 42 are popular science information, although written by a former extension specialist. Although his words present valuable information for any pecan grower, I don’t think it is appropriate to cite blogpost publication in a research review paper.

 

 

Authors Contribution

 

This section is appropriate.

 

Acknowledgements

 

This section is appropriate.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

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