Molecular and Metabolic Changes under Environmental Stresses: The Biosynthesis of Quality Components in Preharvest Tea Shoots
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
I get your article titled (Molecular and Metabolic Changes under Environmental 2 Stresses: the Biosynthesis of Quality Components in Preharvest 3 Tea Shoots) for review. The article is very interest and written very well. However, there are some comments which is mentioned in the attached pdf file.
Furthermore, please revise the scientific names, it must be italic, there are several ones in the text specifically in the references section
Best regards
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Point 1. Revise the scientific names, it must be italic, there are several ones in the text specifically in the references section
Response 1: Thank you very much for your comments. We carefully revised the scientific names in the text and formatted the references in our revised manuscript based on the reference template of Horticulturae.
Point 2. Figure 1 is not clear, please provide clearer picture.
Response 2: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We apologize for the pictures used in this article. One reviewer suggested that Figure 1 is irrelevant for this review. We considered this suggestion and agreed with it. Therefore, we deleted this figure from the manuscript.
Point 3. The “CO2” is wrongly written.
Response 3: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We apologize to you for overlooking this. We revised it as “CO2” in Line 72.
Point 4. The “CO2” is wrongly written.
Response 4: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We apologize to you for overlooking this. We have revised it as “CO2” in Line 72.
Point 5. Figure 2 is very small and hard to read.
Response 5: Thank you very much for your comment. We are sorry that it was difficult to read. We replaced Figure 2 with a much clearer one and renamed it as Figure 1 in the revised manuscript. See it on page 3.
Point 6. Figure 3 is not clear please provide more clear one.
Response 6: Thank you very much for your comment. We are sorry that it was difficult to read. We replaced Figure 3 with a much clearer one and renamed it as Figure 2 in the revised manuscript. See it on page 6.
Point 7. Figure 4 is not clear please provide more clear one.
Response 7: Thank you very much for your comment. We are sorry that it was difficult to read. We replaced Figure 4 with a much clearer one and renamed it as Figure 3 in the revised manuscript. See it on page 8.
Point 8. Delete the reference of 69.
Response 8: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We are sorry that this reference was listed inappropriately. We deleted reference 69 at the end of sentence. See it in line 422.
Point 9. Highlight the words “Figure 5”.
Response 9: Thank you very much for your comment. In the revised manuscript, “Figure 4” is used to replace “Figure 5”, and we highlighted the words “Figure 4” below the figure. See it in line 494.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Editors,
Yhank you so much for choosing me as a reviewer of the manuscript horticulturae-1574450 entitled ‘Molecular and Metabolic Changes under Environmental Stresses: the Biosynthesis of Quality Components in Preharvest Tea Shoot’ submitted to Horticulturae. I hope that my comments will help Authors to improve their manuscript.
Detailed remarks concerning manuscript:
Key words - it is not recommended to use as key words the words or phrases that appeared in the text included.
Conclusions - Based on the presented information in this review I suggest to present the direction for the future studies. Please modify the conclusions
Reference list contains editorial mistakes. It is not possible to mention all of them. For example: Once the abbreviated titles of the journal are used, but the other time the full names are presented. Once each word in the manuscript title are written with capital letter, but the other time only the first word of the manuscript title is written with capital letter. The reference should be prepared according to the one scheme proposed in the guides for Authors. Please go through the reference list very carefully and do needed changes.
The Latin names of the species should be italicized. Please go through the whole text of the manuscript and do needed changes.
Author Response
Point 1. Keywords - it is not recommended to use as key words the words or phrases that appeared in the text included.
Response 1: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We revised the keywords based on your suggestion. For example, we used the words “Molecular mechanisms” to replace “Molecular and Metabolic changes”. Please see the revised keywords in lines 23 to 24.
Revise the scientific names, it must be italic, there are several ones in the text specifically in the references section.
Point 2. Conclusions - Based on the presented information in this review I suggest to present the direction for the future studies. Please modify the conclusions.
Response 2: Answer: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We modified the conclusion by adding prospects about the direction for the future studies at the end of this paragraph, in lines 659-661.
Point 3. Reference list contains editorial mistakes. It is not possible to mention all of them. For example: Once the abbreviated titles of the journal are used, but the other time the full names are presented. Once each word in the manuscript title is written with capital letter, but the other time only the first word of the manuscript title is written with capital letter. The reference should be prepared according to the one scheme proposed in the guides for Authors. Please go through the reference list very carefully and do needed changes.
Response 3: Thank you very much for your comments. We revised the reference format based on your suggestion.
Point 4. The Latin names of the species should be italicized. Please go through the whole text of the manuscript and do needed changes.
Response 4: Thank you very much for your comment. We have changed the Latin names of the species to be in italics.
Reviewer 3 Report
The review of Liu et al. about the effects of stressors on the molecular mechanisms that produce metabolites that influence tea quality is appropriate for Horticulturae, however, the article needs to be substantially revised and the use of the English language needs to be improved. My comments follow below.
The use of the English language needs to be improved substantially.
Figure 1 is irrelevant for this review
Line 45 revise
Line 52 revise
Line 73 revise
Line 183 phenylalanine ammonia lyase is commonly referenced as PAL (and is listed as PAL below in the manuscript). Is PAAS a mistake?
Provide a table with the main quality components and their biosynthetic root for convenience.
Line 333 revise handling
Line 334 revise
Revise “spice plants” “beverage plants” throughout the manuscript
Do not use the term decrees and increase for genes use a term as “exhibited increased expression”
Line 363 revise
Line 510 revise the title
Line 529 revise the title
Line 536 revise
Line 571 the usage of the term DEG (differentially expressed gene) here is wrong
Please consider the removal of 4.3 or attempt a fundamental revision of the paragraph.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Point 1. The use of the English language needs to be improved substantially.
Response 1: Thank you very much for your suggestions. We are sorry that the English in the original manuscript was so difficult to read. The language in our revised manuscript was edited by an editor from Beijing Borun Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. (http:// www.scinet.com.cn).
Point 2. Figure 1 is irrelevant for this review
Response 2: Thank you very much for your suggestion. After consideration, we decided that Figure 1 is indeed irrelevant for this review. We deleted this figure in the revised manuscript based on your suggestion.
Point 3. Line 45 revise
Response 3: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We are sorry for the difficulty of our English. Because one reviewer suggested that the introduction need fundamental revision, we revised the part and deleted this sentence based on the suggestion.
Point 4. Line 52 revise
Response 4: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We are sorry for the difficulty of our English. We changed the sentence “a review for summarizing previous studies is still insufficiency.” into “there is a substantial lack of a review that summarizes previous studies.” in the revised manuscript in lines 64-65.
Point 5. Line 73 revise
Response 5: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We are sorry for the difficulty of our English. We have revised this sentence as “Amino acids provide the taste of umami and are easily converted into aroma compounds during the baking process.” in lines 81-82.
Point 6. Line 183 phenylalanine ammonia lyase is commonly referenced as PAL (and is listed as PAL below in the manuscript). Is PAAS a mistake?
Response 6: Thank you very much for your comments. We are sorry that this was unclear. The name of the enzyme should be “phenylacetaldehyde synthase” not “phenylalanine ammonia lyase”. We have revised the name in lines 110-111, and line 193.
Point 7. Provide a table with the main quality components and their biosynthetic root for convenience.
Response 7: Thank you very much for your comment. In fact, the main quality components and their biosynthetic origins are shown in Figure 1 (Originally Figure 2) on page 3. We are sorry that our description led to a misunderstanding. We hope our revision will make this easier to understand.
Point 8. Line 333 revise handling
Response 8: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We are sorry for the difficulty of our English. We have changed the word “handling” into “treatment” in line 347.
Point 9. Line 334 revise; Revise “spice plants” “beverage plants” throughout the manuscript.
Response 9: Thank you very much for your comment. We changed the word “emission” into “emissions” in line 349. In the original line 336, the term “spice plants” refers to sage and Hypericum brasiliense based on the reference. We cited this article to illustrate that the volatile compounds of other plants also can be induced by drought. To avoid any misunderstandings, we changed the word “aroma” in line 352 into “volatile compounds”. We changed the term “beverage crop” in to “beverage plant” in line 650.
Point 10. Do not use the term decrease and increase for genes use a term as “exhibited increased expression”
Response 10: Thank you for your comments. We are sorry for the difficulty of our English. We replaced the terms of “decrease” and “increase” by terms as “exhibited increased expression” and “exhibited decreased expression” in the revised manuscript based on your comments.
Point 11. Line 363 revise
Response 11: Thank you for your comments. We changed the sentence in original line 363 into “When the environmental temperature is not optimal, i.e., high temperature and low temperature (cold) for some time, plants can suffer heat or freezing damage.” Please see the revised manuscript in lines 377-379.
Point 12. Line 510 revise the title
Response 12: Thank you for your comments. We revised the title as “Discussion and prospects” in line 534.
Point 13. Line 529 revise the title
Response 13: Thanks for your comments. We have revised the title as “Artificial environments could be created to affect the metabolic biosyntheis of preharvest tea shoots” in line 554 in the revised manuscript.
Point 14. Line 536 revise
Response 14: Thank you for your comments. We are sorry for the difficulty of our English. We revised the sentence as “This suggests that endogenous metabolites in picked fresh leaves changed even when isolated from the branches over a period.” in lines 561-562.
Point 15. Line 571 the usage of the term DEG (differentially expressed gene) here is wrong
Response 15: Thank you for your comment. We revised the term “DEG” in the title as “gene” in line 598.
Point 16. Please consider the removal of 4.3 or attempt a fundamental revision of the paragraph.
Response 16: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We are sorry for the difficulty of our English and illogical language. After careful consideration, we all agree that section 4.3 is important for this text. We have several reasons as follows:
First, the content of 4.3 is based on analyses from many of the references in part 2 of the text, and it is not irrelevant.
Secondly, the prospect proposed in 4.3 is believed to be the direction for future studies, and it is very important in the text.
Finally, the prospect in the Conclusion is in concert with 4.3.
Therefore, we fundamentally revised 4.3 in lines 598 to 646 in the new manuscript, and we hope that the revised manuscript will meet the requirements of the journal.
Reviewer 4 Report
This was an interesting review paper with good information about environmental challenges in tea production. In my opinion, it could be accepted for publication after some minor revisions as I mentioned in the main text. See the attached file for details.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 4 Comments
Point 1. In my idea, you could add more information about horticultural aspects importance of tea in the Introduction.
Response 1: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We fundamentally revised this part based on your suggestion. We added these contents: the primary quality compounds and their biosynthetic pathways of tea, and how environmental stresses affect the metabolic pathways. We hope the revised manuscript will meet the requirements of Horticulturae.
Point 2. CO2
Response 2: Thank you for your comments. We sincerely apologize for our carelessness. We revised it as “CO2” in the new manuscript in line 72.
Point 3. CO2
Response 3: Thank you for your comments. We sincerely apologize for our carelessness. We revised it as “CO2” in the new manuscript in line 72.
Point 4. what do you mean quality component? The tea quality all depend on this pathway? or some important compound which have the critical role in tea quality?
Response 4: Thank you very much for your comment. We sincerely apologize for the illogical language in the figure caption. The figure shows the biosynthetic pathways of the main quality components of tea. We revised the figure caption in line 95.
Point 5. How about Salinity stress and heavy metal toxccity? There were also 2 important stress which decrease tea production in the world. So It would be much better to add some details about these stress.
Response 5: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We described the changes in quality components in part of section 3.5 in lines 512-533, and showed the biosynthetic pathways in Figure 4b on page 11. Many studies have shown that heavy metal toxicity significantly affects the growth of tea plants. However, most studies in this area focus on the resistant mechanisms and food safety while ignoring their effects on tea quality. We found only one research article published in Geological Science and Technology Information in 2008 that showed heavy metals in the soil would decrease the total levels of polyphenols and caffeine. Because the there is such a paucity of information available on the effects of major heavy metals in soil on tea quality, we did not consider the effects of heavy metal toxicity on tea quality when writing the review.
Reviewer 5 Report
1- Introduction is weak and requires more references
2- It is not clear if Figure 2 was produced by authors or adapted from another author. Please clarify and mention references where needed.
3- Improve language throughly
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 5 Comments
Point 1. Introduction is weak and requires more references
Response 1：Thank you very much for your suggestion. We fundamentally revised this part based on your suggestion. We have added this content: the important quality compounds and their biosynthetic pathways of tea, and how environmental stresses affect the metabolic pathways. We hope the revised manuscript will meet the requirements of Horticulturae.
Point 2. It is not clear if Figure 2 was produced by authors or adapted from another author. Please clarify and mention references where needed.
Response 2: Thank you for your suggestion. We drew the biosynthetic pathways based on the affected genes and pathways of the references used in this text. In addition, We also referred to the KEGG metabolic pathway when we drew it.
Point 3. Improve language throughly
Response 3: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We are sorry for the difficulty of our English in the original manuscript. The language in our revised manuscript was edited by an editor from Beijing Borun Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. (http:// www.scinet.com.cn).
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
After the revision, the article can be accepted for publication
