Cultivar and Rootstock Effects on Growth, Yield and Nut Quality of Pistachio under Semi-Arid Conditions of South Mediterranean

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I would like to thank the authors for their tremendous effort in the manuscript entitled “Cultivars and rootstocks effects on growth, yield, and nut quality of pistachio under semi-arid conditions of South Mediterranean”. Although it could have been better to repeat the experiment at least one more time, the design and explanation of the experiment are also satisfactory.

 Line 96: March?

Please mention the number of days after grafting for data collection.

 

Please include cultural/management practice in the material and methods section.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kind comments and the time you have invested in improving this article.
All his considerations have been taken into account. Please review lines 95, 100-103 and 106-107.

Reviewer 2 Report

Title

You wrote: ... yield, and nut;    Consider: ... yield and nut

Introduction

Consider the content of the first two paragraphs, reversing them, putting paragraph two (lines 47-52) first and then summarizing the content of lines 38-46.

Line 61

You wrote: P. vera;   consider: P. vera

Last paragraph, line 83

You wrote: this work was ....    and on line 84-85 you wrote, … evaluation will focus on…

consider: ... evaluation focused on …

Line 193

You wrote: 3.3. .  Kernel oil…;      consider: 3.3. Kernel oil…             

Conclusions

Lines 328-329

Technical practices should be tested to enhance growth and increase fruit production such as supplemental irrigation...

This sentence is out of context; this cannot be inferred from the results and it makes no sense in pistachio culture or given the availability of water in the Mediterranean basin.

 

Authors should reinforce the idea that pistachio is a crop to be implanted because it has a lower environmental impact in the Mediterranean basin.

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kind comments and the time you have invested in improving this article.
All his considerations have been taken into account.

• Title. You wrote: ... yield, and nut;    Consider: ... yield and nut

Done as suggested. 

• Introduction. Consider the content of the first two paragraphs, reversing them, putting paragraph two (lines 47-52) first and then summarizing the content of lines 38-46.

Done as suggested. Please see lines 38-53. 

• Line 61. You wrote: P. vera;   consider: P. vera

Changed as suggested. Please, see line 61.

• Last paragraph, line 83. You wrote: this work was ....    and on line 84-85 you wrote, … evaluation will focus on… consider: ... evaluation focused on …

Changed as suggested. 

 

• Line 193. You wrote: 3.3. .  Kernel oil…;      consider: 3.3. Kernel oil…    

Done as suggested.         

• Conclusions. Lines 328-329. Technical practices should be tested to enhance growth and increase fruit production such as supplemental irrigation... This sentence is out of context; this cannot be inferred from the results and it makes no sense in pistachio culture or given the availability of water in the Mediterranean basin. Authors should reinforce the idea that pistachio is a crop to be implanted because it has a lower environmental impact in the Mediterranean basin.

Modified as suggested. Please, see conclusion section. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Detailed comments:

References in the manuscript text should be in accordance with the requirements of the journal. It is not necessary to mention the years: Oukabli (1995) (L 223), Lacasta et al. (2004) (L 226), Carbonell-Barrachina et al. (2005) (L 229), etc.

Table 3 – in the first column, "Treatment" is missing in the table head.

Table 4 – replace „Cultivar/ Rootstock (Duncan’s multiple range test (p<0.05)” with „Treatment”. I do not understand for what purpose the Authors provided superscripts in the table title „Fat content¹ „ acid² profile, Oleic/Linoleic acids ratio¹ (O/L) and Unsaturated/Saturated fatty acids ratio¹” and in the table header for „O/L³ UFAs/SFAs⁴”. I suggest placing the notation: "1. Fat content values, (...) Significant (p ≤ 0.05)" below the table as it explains the data it contains.

Tables 3 and 4 should be placed in the text immediately after their first referenced.

„This work showed high annual variation of studied parameter…” (L 324), „All studied parameters ap- peared to be dependent on cultivar/rootstock combination …” (L 330) - which parameters?

Author Response

The authors thank the reviewer for the time spent reviewing this article. We are completely sure that after your contributions the article has improved remarkably.

 

• References in the manuscript text should be in accordance with the requirements of the journal. It is not necessary to mention the years: Oukabli (1995) (L 223), Lacasta et al. (2004) (L 226), Carbonell-Barrachina et al. (2005) (L 229), etc.

The authors apologize for this error. The text has been revised and errors in citation formatting have been corrected.

 

• Table 3 – in the first column, "Treatment" is missing in the table head.

Added as suggested. 

 

• Table 4 – replace „Cultivar/ Rootstock (Duncan’s multiple range test (p<0.05)” with „Treatment”. I do not understand for what purpose the Authors provided superscripts in the table title „Fat content¹ „ acid² profile, Oleic/Linoleic acids ratio¹ (O/L) and Unsaturated/Saturated fatty acids ratio¹” and in the table header for „O/L³ UFAs/SFAs⁴”. I suggest placing the notation: "1. Fat content values, (...) Significant (p ≤ 0.05)" below the table as it explains the data it contains.

Reviewer is right. The information of analyses have been added as a footnote, instead in the table title. 

 

• Tables 3 and 4 should be placed in the text immediately after their first referenced.

Tables have been moved trought the text to try placed neareast to their first referenced. 

• „This work showed high annual variation of studied parameter…” (L 324), „All studied parameters ap- peared to be dependent on cultivar/rootstock combination …” (L 330) - which parameters?

This sentence refers to all the parameters measured throughout the study. As it is a very long list of parameters, we considered not including all of them in the conclusions section to facilitate reading.