In Vitro Micropropagation of Commercial Ginseng Cultivars (Panax ginseng Meyer) via Somatic Embryogenesis Compared to Traditional Seed Production

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Line 136. The letter p for statistic must be P. Please correct trough the manuscript.

The language of the manuscript is good.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer 1

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Line 136. The letter p for statistic must be P. Please correct trough the manuscript.

The language of the manuscript is good.

# Reflecting on the reviewer's comment, we revised manuscript accordingly.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Paper titled with “Commercial scale micropropagation of ginseng …… via somatic embryogenesis compared to traditional seed production” by Lee et. al. is focused on application of somatic embryogeneis for ginseng cultivars propagation in less time. 

Authors are suggested to include few more details on somatic embryogenesis its mechanism and advantages in the introduction section. 

Why authors have selected Zygotic embryos as an explant for development of somatic emryogenesis. Whether authors have explored about other somatic tissues for this purpose?

Legends of each figures need better explanation, e.g. In Figure 1, its mentioned ‘Fruit characteristics of P. ginseng depending on the cultivar’. Please mention what characteristics authors wish to highlight. 

 

Figure 7, Please provide better quality image.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Paper titled with “Commercial scale micropropagation of ginseng …… via somatic embryogenesis compared to traditional seed production” by Lee et. al. is focused on application of somatic embryogeneis for ginseng cultivars propagation in less time. 

# We appreciate the excellent comments on our manuscript, and we have revised the following to reflect the reviewer's opinion.

 

Authors are suggested to include few more details on somatic embryogenesis its mechanism and advantages in the introduction section.

#Reflecting the reviewer's comment, we included more details on somatic embryogenesis its mechanism and advantages in the introduction section (Line 61-62, 67-69).

 

Why authors have selected Zygotic embryos as an explant for development of somatic emryogenesis. Whether authors have explored about other somatic tissues for this purpose?

#Zygote embryos have been primarily used as explants in somatic embryogenesis studies of P.ginseng due to their ability to form direct somatic embryos without hormones. The use of hormones is essential if other tissues are to be used as explants. Since the probability of somatic variation is low when direct somatic embryogenesis is generated without hormones, only zygotic embryos were used as explants in the present study (Line 63-64). Please ask for reviewer understand. Please understand our purpose for using zygote embryos.

 

Legends of each figures need better explanation, e.g. In Figure 1, its mentioned ‘Fruit characteristics of P. ginseng depending on the cultivar’. Please mention what characteristics authors wish to highlight. 

 #Reflecting the reviewer's comment, we added more details in the Figure 1, 2, 3.

 

Figure 7, Please provide better quality image.

# Reflecting the reviewer's comment, we improved the resolution of all figures.

           

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Then present manuscript aimed at comparing conventional seed production and micropropagation via somatic embryogenesis in four commercial cultivars of  ginseng. The authors need to explain in detail how commercial production of ginseng is practically feasible via seed production and via somatic embryogenesis from seeds considering the nature of pollination in ginseng. Trueness to type is a prerequisite for commercial production of any cultivar in crop plants. The purpose of the study has not been well justified and the title is not appropriate to the objectives and experiments of the study. A number of reports are already available on somatic embryogenesis of ginseng, and the present study is not complete to draw valid conclusion on somatic embryogenesis. More an well designed research is needed for the same.

Author Response

Reviewer 3

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Then present manuscript aimed at comparing conventional seed production and micropropagation via somatic embryogenesis in four commercial cultivars of ginseng.

# We appreciate the excellent comments on our manuscript, and we have explained the reviewer comments and revised the following to reflect the reviewer's opinion.

 

The authors need to explain in detail how commercial production of ginseng is practically feasible via seed production and via somatic embryogenesis from seeds considering the nature of pollination in ginseng. Trueness to type is a prerequisite for commercial production of any cultivar in crop plants.

# P. ginseng is propagated by seeds, and there have been no successful studies on other vegetative propagation methods (Line 53-55). Somatic embryogenesis is one of the few vegetative breeding methods applicable to P. ginseng. The somatic embryogenesis of P. ginseng studied so far has only been studied up to the production of regenerated plants, and it has not been demonstrated how many plants can be produced from one seed. In this study, it was proved that mass reproduction is possible through somatic embryogenesis of four ginseng cultivars. 37-41 regenerated plants could be produced within one year from a single seed (Table 6; Line 231-235). In contrast, it took four years to produce 23-58 seeds for seed propagation (Table1; Line 149-154). In particular, propagation efficiency by micropropagation was higher in Cheonryang cultivar, which had low seed production efficiency (Table 1 and Table 6). It was proved that micropropagation using somatic embryogenesis can shorten the period of more than 3 years compared to seed (Line 344-349).

# Reflecting on the reviewer's comment, we included more details on characteristics of ginseng propagation and nature of pollination in ginseng in the introduction (Line 53-55).

# Reflecting on the reviewer's comment, we revised manuscript on how commercial production of ginseng is practically feasible via somatic embryogenesis in the conclusion (Line 353-355).

 

The purpose of the study has not been well justified and the title is not appropriate to the objectives and experiments of the study. A number of reports are already available on somatic embryogenesis of ginseng, and the present study is not complete to draw valid conclusion on somatic embryogenesis. More an well designed research is needed for the same.

#The purpose of the present study is the mass propagation of ginseng cultivars. Although developed ginseng cultivars have many advantages over native species, they have not been widely distributed to farmers. It takes more than 3 years to produce ginseng seeds, and the number of seeds is less than 40 (Line 50-52, 54-57). For this reason, it takes a long time to spread cultivars to farmers (Line 51-58). Our results revealed that micropropagation via somatic embryogenesis in P. ginseng is more efficient than seed propagation (Line 344-352). The present study has novelty because there has been few study comparing ginseng seed propagation and in vitro micropropagation via somatic embryogenesis. We ask for the reviewer's understanding and generosity.

#Reflecting on the reviewer's comment, we revised the title

#Reflecting on the reviewer's comment, we revised the conclusion to justify the purpose and expected effect of this study (Line 74-777; 349-352)

Author Response File: Author Response.docx