Axillary Bud Fate Shapes Plant Architecture in Horticultural Crops

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear author,

Nice work and very thorough study!

The paper is written in good English only minor corrections are needed in the paper. Please, find attached my edits within the manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for careful reading of the manuscript. In the revised version, we have corrected the grammatical and spelling errors that the reviewer pointed out. The only suggested edit that we did not correct was on line #221, where the reviewer suggested changing “SBPs, in turn, upregulate SFT…” to “SBPs, in turn, upregulates SFT..”. We do not feel that the suggested correction is grammatically correct, and therefore we chose to keep our original text.

Once again, thank you for careful revision. We are very happy that our manuscript was of sufficient quality!

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors

The manuscript "Axillary bud fate shapes plant architecture in horticultural crops" was reviewed. The MS is not suitable for publication. Corrections and comments were done on the annotated manuscript. After revision based on correction and comments, it can be published.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for careful reading of the manuscript. In the revised version, we have corrected most of the suggested edits. However, some suggested corrections were not done, for the reasons listed below.

Reviewer 2 raised a point of excluding root architecture in this review, and mentioned that the term “plant architecture” should actually include root architecture as well. To address this issue, the reviewer suggested using the term “plant canopy architecture” or “canopy architecture” instead of “plant architecture. We do acknowledge that the reviewer 2 is correct in their concern on nomenclature; however, we authors feel that the term “plant architecture” is not misleading in our context. To highlight the fact that we are discussing only above-ground plant architecture, we have modified the first sentence of the abstract: “Above-ground plant architecture is dictated to a large extent by the fates and growth rates of aerial plant meristems.”

Line #38: The reviewer suggested changing “to doubling of yield potential” to “a doubling of yield potential”. As the other reviewers did not suggest a change here, we did not change our original text.

Line#52: The reviewer suggested changing “The major endogenous signal regulating AXM fate” to “The major endogenous signal-regulating AXM fate”. We authors do not think that the suggested modification is grammatically correct, and the other reviewers did not suggest a change here. We decided not to change our original text.

Line#74: The reviewer suggested removing a comma. However, the other reviewers did not make the same suggestion and we authors feel like a comma is in place here, therefore we decided to keep the original formulation.

Line#79: The reviewer suggested changing “The major-effect QTL” to “The major-effective QTL”. We authors do not think that the suggested modification is grammatically correct, and the other reviewers did not suggest a change here. We decided not to change our original text.

Line#503: The reviewer suggested changing “a limited number of major effect genes..” to “a limited number of major effective genes..” We authors do not think that the suggested modification is grammatically correct, and the other reviewers did not suggest a change here. We decided not to change our original text.

The reviewer also suggested adding a chapter on AXM fate regulation within the Cucurbit family. Although this would be an interesting addition, we authors feel like we are already providing enough examples of AXM fate regulation in different crops. As we state in the introduction, this review is not intended to be a complete overview of AXM fate regulation in all crop species, but rather provide examples of different kinds of crops (monocots, dicots, annual, perennial, woody, herbaceous). We sincerely feel like the examples we provide are enough to make a point on the fairly conserved pathways regulating AXM fate in different crops species.

Reviewer 3 Report

Review: Auxillary bud fate shapes plant architecture in horticultural crops

 

This review describes the genetic mechanisms that regulate AXB fate in different crops.

The introduction is correctly organized and it explains a general background of the information presented in the review.

The information presented within the review is logically organized attending the cultivars. However, I want to remark that in the section related to the information referred to the apple there is no image associated to the text.

As a suggestion, I would like to comment that the information presented is very interesting and opens the opportunity to consider the mechanism of action axillary bud fate shape generation as a primary effect for the control of horticultural crops. However, it would be very interesting to develop a research project in which you study the same molecular factor for different crops.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for you positive review!

We chose not to include a figure for apple, because the information on AXB fate regulation for this species is very scarce, and we felt that illustrating the scarce information would not be very meaningful.

Comparative studies on AXB fate regulation in different species is indeed an interesting topic, as the reviewer suggested. The second author is planning to start her own research line exploring this idea further.