The Effects of Growth Regulators and Apical Bud Removal on Growth, Flowering, and Corms Production of Two Gladiolus Varieties
and Svein Øivind Solberg 3,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The abstract section is appropriately written.
The introduction section has a good structure covering all essential topics, leading to paper aims. I would recommend adding some references regarding gladiolus value, world trading, major producers, main varieties and similar.
Line 33: delete word both, there are three points listed.
I suggest moving this part to the material and methods section: Gladiolus has a typical geophytic nature, with corms as the 36 main storage and propagation organ (Figure 1).
Material and methods section
Is table 1 representing your results, or does the range come from surveying similar studies? If the former please move it to the results section, if the latter please add references in the new column.
Line 108: correct cm2 to cm2
Line 116: delete ‘
Results section:
please rephrase those sentence structures 'there seemed to be no clear'
Please provide detailed figure legends for each of them, since some parts are difficult to read on the graphs.
Tables 2 and 3 need to be supplemented with the Duncans' multiple range tests information to be more informative and to draw reliable conclusions.
Table 2 and figure 5 represent the same results, please choose only one illustration.
In the discussion section please provide an opinion on why varieties differed in the responses to applied treatments. Are those coming from the same breeding programs, what are the ploidy levels and similar?
Lines 249-265 are essential and very well elaborated.
In the conclusion section please add some exact findings in metrical values.
Author Response
Thank you for the valuable comments and suggestions. We have carefully edited our new version of the manuscript according to your suggestions. For your information we also had another reviewer that also had comments. All changes are highlighted in the new version. A detailed feedback on your comments is provided in the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The aim of the manuscript is to examine the effects of apical bud removal coupled with the use of benzyladenine (BA) or gibberellic acid (GA3) as growth regulators in two gladiolus cultivars. The idea of thet okind of the research is vaulable and has a strong applicable meaning. If the method would be established, it can be useful for gladiolus corms, useful. Anaway, the manuscript sounds messy. English must be improved. Now, it is really difficult to read the paper. In M&M section, I do not understand clearly the plan of the experiment. It should be planned in an order. In the Results section, the diagrams look for me incomprehensible. The description of particular morphological features of the corm should be separated for GA3 and BA. Otherwise there is a mess.
Author Response
Thank you for the valuable comments and suggestions. We have carefully edited our new version of the manuscript according to your suggestions. For your information we also had another reviewer that also had comments. All changes are highlighted in the new version. A detailed feedback on your comments is provided in the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors thank you for addressing point-by-point all listed suggestions.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript is properly corrected. I can recommend it to publish in Horticulturae.
