Effect of Gliding Arc Plasma Activated Water (GAPAW) on Maize (Zea mays L.) Seed Germination and Growth
, Joseph Djeugap Fovo 3,*, Berthelot Sop-Tamo 4, Hortense Nöelle Apala Mafouasson 5, Marcelline Carine Ngo Ngwem 1,6, Marie Jeanne Tebu 1, Georges Kamgang Youbi 1 and Samuel Laminsi 1,*
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
see attachment
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
All corrections
are integrated in the attached document
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript was written well. However, the quality of data presentation must be enhanced, and all editorial errors should be taken care of before the next step.
Line 3: Please use uppercase for each word in the title
Line 6, 9, 12-13: Please use, to separate the name of the city, state, and country instead of -
Line 20: was carried out.
To be matched with line 24
Line 22: with 15-min-GAPAW
Line 23: 5-min-GAPAW-treated
Line 26: with the 15-min-GAPAW
Line 28: to other treatments.
Line 30: Please use lowercase for all words in keywords
Line 35: in the food industry.
Line 37: you may delete “as”
Line 39: Please add a space before 10
Line 37 and 40: You may edit the way that you are referring to the citations so line 37 [1] and Line 40 [2,3]
Line 45: instead of (Brisset et al., 2009). you may use [4].
Line 50: and a large number of
Line 51-52-53: Please delete the extra space between ) ,
Line 53: The effect, the species
Line 57 and 62: Please add a blank space before The and with and after product
Line 61: via the treatment
Line 76: in agriculture
Lines 86-87-99: all subheadings and subtitles should have a number such as 1. introduction
2. Methods and Materials
2.1. Location of the Study Site
Line 99: 2.2. Glidarc Plasma Device and Treatment Procedure
Line 94: 21°C, and
Line 128: Please clarify this, what is in fig 2 is not glass Petri dishes
Line 156: the lids were off for 72 hrs?
Line 161-162: while the width of leaves was measured in the middle of the leaf.
Line 210: should not be bold
Line 220 and 224: Figures 6. and 7. should be bold
Line 309: by the plasma treatment
Line 356: maize seeds are watered
Please one more time go through the reference list and edit according to the journal guidelines
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
All requirements from reviewer 2 are summarised in
The document named 2 reviewer 2
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
In this manuscript, the authors studied the effect of Gliding Arc Plasma Activated Water (GAPAW) technique on maize seed germination and growth variables. The author’s overall findings demonstrate that the treatments of GAPAW for maize seed will improve its germination properties. However, I would like to suggest some changes in the manuscript to further improve its quality:
The author should simplify the content of this article; the description of many sentences seems cumbersome. In addition, although perfectly understandable, the writing format including marks, spacing between numbers, and even font errors in figures and tables requires attention. I have marked many errors in the text, and the author should carefully revise and check whether there are other errors.
Abstract
Consider changing the order of some sentences to make text logical. And there are many statements belong to inference instead of results, so please move them to the suitable location.
Introduction
It is suggested to split it into several paragraphs, each of which has one or two key points, which may be more readable.
Material and experimental methods
The experimental process was not described clearly, such as when to conduct the Lab experiment? When to start field planting? And when to determine these indexes except for chlorophyll content?
The author needs to distinguish the difference between seed germination and germination rate. In my opinion, the germination rate used in this paper is not appropriate.
The statistical analysis is not effectively explained, and the data in the figures and tables lack the corresponding significance marks, which makes the description of some results lack of reference.
Results
The statement of this section should be direct and clear. Please simplify it as much as possible. Additionally, delete some sentences that do not belong to the result description.
It seems that the statement of some results cannot be drawn from the data, such as L229-230, and L243. Please re-write it after confirmation.
The presentation of figures and tables is simple, and at least some marks of significance should be added. Besides, please unify the size and font of words in the figure.
Discussion
This section is very general and use the sentence like “This result is similar/in line with/ corroborates with” for many times. What are the differences or highlights of your study? Please emphasize it.
Some of the descriptions are lack of basis, such as L268-271, and 292-295. Please add corresponding references.
The authors discuss whether the results of this article are similar to other studies and its possible reasons for their results, but do not or rarely analysis what these results represent? For example, the treatment of GAPAW changed the morphology and color of maize seeds, and what does this mean for them? Please supplement it accordingly.
References
Please double-check the format of the references, including whether the article names are capitalized for the first letter but not every word needs, and whether the author name is accurate, etc. I marked the errors I found in the manuscript.
Why do some references have DOI numbers while others do not? Please unify the format.
There are many references with incomplete page numbers, please supplement them
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Apologies for the delay
Kindly find enclosed answers related
to your comments from our article
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
