Biology, Diagnostics, Pathogenomics and Mitigation Strategies of Jackfruit-Bronzing Bacterium Pantoea stewartii subspecies stewartii: What Do We Know So Far about This Culprit?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus), evergreen tree native to tropical Asia and widely grown throughout the wetland tropics for its large fruits and durable wood. Jackfruit production is very important for some tropical Asian countries for both cash and food. Recently, the increasingly occurrences of jackfruit-bronzing disease, caused by Pantoea stewartii subsp. stewartii, resulted in great losses for jackfruit plantations and industries. In this manuscript, the authors comprehensively explored the significance of the jackfruit-bronzing disease and its causal agent, including pathogen’s biology, virulence and pathogenomics, emphasizing the disease diagnosis and disease control strategies. The manuscript is well written and well-organized. The informative manuscript will be helpful readers in understanding the destructive disease and its pathogen, and especially to jackfruit growers and agricultural practitioners for developing effective and sustainable jackfruit-bronzing control methods.

However, there are some limitations in this manuscript. Before publication, a minor revision is needed for improving the manuscript.

 

Questions and suggestions:

1. In abstract, Pantoea stewartii subsp. stewartii, the leading role in this manuscript, is absent!!! Please add the scientific name of pathogen in Abstract.

2. In the Introduction part, authors should give a general description about the diseases of jackfruit before jackfruit-bronzing disease. It is suggested that the Introduction should be rearranged in the order as “jackfruit, jackfruit diseases, jackfruit-bronzing disease, and so on”

3. The sentence from Ln 58-Ln 59 seems inappropriate and illogical. Please rewrite this paragraph to fit the context relationship.

4. The “Pathogenomics” is one of the keywords in this manuscript, however, there are little information about the type III secretion system and the effectors, Type II secretion system, extracellular enzymes and quorum sensing, which are widely recognized as virulence factors or pathogenicity related factors in Pantoea stewartii. It is suggested that the above virulence factor genes should be introduced in “5. Pathogenomics and Pathogenicity of”.

5. Figure 6 is too simple to convey a correct and comprehensive view. The mechanisms in Figure 6 are of a bit speculative and over interpretation.

6. As the genome sequences of Pantoea stewartii subsp. stewartii strains are available in GenBank database, a phylogenomic tree including some typical strains of Erwiniaceae and Pectobacteriaceae will be helpful to readers to understand the review.

7. Since jackfruit-bronzing is a new disease, its infection cycle and infection progress should be illustrated in Figures.

8. Please also pay attention to some input errors, e.g., in Ln 134, “[33],34,35]”. In Ln 258, [59] is used as the subject in sentence “[59] recommended MLSA”.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The work is really informative and complete starting with the biology, the different treatments of the pathogen,etc. The figures are also clear.

Hereunder are some minor comments:

The title needs to be changed for better clarification

In figure4, please replace "anion" by "onion"

I think it would be better to put the scientific names of the plants (genus and species).

In line 258, replace reference 59 by the name of authors. We cannot start the line with the number of ref.

In line 514, the reference 147 is written twice.

 

Sincerely,

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

After the first work done in 2018, this review complements and presents important notes about this dangerous pathogen that affects jackfruit and relatives species that affect another hosts.

The first three parts (biology, diagnosis and etiology) are very good. However, the mitigation strategies are quite generic and without much support with literature and can be supplemented.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx