Effect of Red and Blue Light on Cucumber Seedlings Grown in a Plant Factory

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is interesting and includes valuable results for the production of cucumber seedlings in the plant factory, modifying the red and blue light ratios. It is generally well written and presented. In the pdf I include my suggestions directly, there are several aspects to improve mainly in the methodology and in the discussion, including these suggestions in the manuscript, it could be published

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Reviewer 2 Report

The authors presented the article describing the effect of light quality on cucumber seedling production. In the present investigation the specific effects of red and blue light on seedlings growth, by analyzing the involved photo-biological mechanism, were recorded. The results shown that red light light, much more than blue light, was beneficial to the growth of cucumber seedlings and promoted the growth of healthy plants. Also, the blue light was more efficient during stomata opening and in alleviating the photoinhibition caused by excessive red light. The paper is very interesting and well written. The figures in the manuscript are very good and with high quality, which is often very demanding job. The obtained results are discussed sufficient and in details.

All of my minor comments are highlighted in yellow color directly in the text manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The authors omitted one important publication: Physiological Responses of Cucumber Seedlings to Different Supplemental Light Duration of Red and Blue LED. Shuya Wang, H. et al. Medicine. Frontiers in Plant Science. Published 12 July 2021

In the Materials and Methods chapter, there is no information about the number of replications  in which the measurements were made. The name of the cultivar of cucumber is also missing.

I think that the term “Control group setting” is not correct, because it suggests that the authors used the so-called control e.g. white light only as a background.

Last sentence of Introduction is “Overall,  the objective was to determine the best light quality ratio of cucumber seedlings which is most suitable for actual production, with standardizations for the actual production in plant factories”. The reader is expected to find an answer to this goal. Such detailed information should be included in the Conclusions section.

Moreover, in the section Conclusions is written: “A higher proportion of red and blue light can be used to irradiate seedlings of cucumber and other crops …” . In my opinion using “other crops” is inappropriate. The authors cannot relate their results to other plant species. Moreover, data from the literature prove that even within the same species, cultivars react differently to the wavelength of light.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I consider that the authors improved the manuscript and included most of the suggestions and the most important ones. The manuscript can be published in the present form, but I leave the convenience of including figures 7 and 8 for the editor's consideration. From my point of view, they are figures based on literature that does not include the effect of the evaluated treatments.