Remobilization of Storage Nitrogen in Young Pear Trees Grafted onto Vigorous Rootstocks (Pyrus betulifolia)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper investigates the remobilisation of storage nitrogen in young pear trees grafted onto vigorous rootstocks. In general this paper is written in clear scientific language and is easy to follow. The Introduction provides the context of the work and justification of the objective. The Materials and Methods provides adequate levels of details about the experimental setup and the derivation of the various metrics calculated from raw data. A few shortages of this work include:

1) Missing statistics on all the results (Tables and Figures) 

2) Part of the M&M descriptions could benefit from a reduction as it is repetitive in places. E.g. Lines 128-140 have been summarised in Table 1. Suggest removing these sentences but provide a more concise summary referring to Table 1. The same applies to Lines 190-202 where the same sentence repeated multiple times with only changes to the calculated form of nitrogen. This should be summarised and simplied into only a couple of sentences. 

Section 2.5. Need to provide more details on the methods used for statistics. Did the author only estimate means and standard derivations? 

3) Figure captions should go below the actual figures, not above

4) When the author stated "... increased obviously" (line 381) or "...obviously lower" (line 280) or "obvious decline" (line 479), did you mean "increased significantly"? Obviously seems like an odd choice of word in the context.

5) In general the Discussion (Chapter 4) could benefit from including more references and providing more critical analysis of the results. In its current state majority of the discussion reads more like a summary of the results with some comparisons to previous studies, but lacking interpretation of the results. Lines 446-461 are a good example of what a compelling discussion should look like. 

 

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewer:

        The response to Reviwer 1 is in the attachment. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I suggest you to improve your English expression by shortening sentences. Thus, the sentence in lines 75-79 should be reviewed. Also the one on lines 104-111, which is difficult to understand. In the same situation are the sentences of lines 133-138, 255-257, 396-400.

An important problem of the whole work is the misuse of the word `shoot`. According to the English pruning terminology, `shoot` means vegetative growth produced from a bud generally during the current growth season. For branches of 2 and 3 years, you must use the term branch (Branch- A shoot that has grown for more than one season).

Between lines 116-123, other formatting was used.
The sentence from 118-120 lines is confused and does not pursue chronologically the works performed.
Also, the bibliography should contain, many more titles from the last 10 years. There are only 9 papers published in the last 10 years of 38 quotes.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewer:

        The response to Reviwer 2 is in the attachment. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The article "Remobilization of storage nitrogen in young pear trees grafted onto vigorous rootstocks (Pyrus betulifolia)" was not written according to journal template, see the title of the figures - must be below not above as it is, it look strange and page number positions ...

See the journal template!

All the figures are in gray scale... please use colors 

Abstract is too long.. please summarize 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewer:

        The response to Reviwer 3 is in the attachment. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Editor, the ms horticulturae-1220226 is about the remobilization of storage nitrogen in young pear trees grafted onto vigorous rootstocks carried out in China. The subject is interesting but a major revision is required before the ms can be considered for publication in Horticulturae. All my comments and suggestions are in the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewer :

         The comments of Reviewer 4 was in "peer-review-12329909.v1.PDF". So the point-by-point response to the reviewer's comments was in the tagging of "peer-review-12329909.v1.PDF".

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

I appreciate the effort and corrections made to the article.

Thank you for taking into account the recommendations I made.

Best regards