Studies on the Germination and Emergence of Castor Seedlings

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please find the file attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your valuables comments and suggestions for improving this manuscript. The changes made in the manuscript are highlighted with revision marks, and I provide some explanations below.

Reviewer: Also, somewhat unnecessary, 9 papers are self-citations./ 9 papers are auto-cited

Author: I deleted most of the self-citations as suggested. I did not mean to make self-citations aiming to boost my citation profile, but it happens that there are scarce studies on seed physiology of this oilseed crop, and the previous publications are a sequence of studies that build a line of research and should be considered together. I think the readers will lose important links to complementary studies and deeper discussion of specific subjects that were provided in those articles. Anyway, some citations were deleted in order to meet the editorial policy.

 

Reviewer: The introduction is clear and well written; however, it lacks elaboration on the significance of the tested plant species.

Author: A new paragraph was included in the beginning of the Introduction Section aiming to present to the reader what is this plant and what is its agronomical importance.

 

Reviewer: Citations are missing for methods that have been done... there are citations for certain statements, but not for methods (for example. line 90-91, Section 2.5, time for germination formula and many others)

Author: Regarding the citation of the methods employed, some lines were included to explain the mathematical procedure to calculate the time for germination (in addition to the citation of the method). However, I could not find citations for many of the methods for measuring specific aspects of castor seed germination. This happens because the variables observed in this study are not traditional in studies with seed germination, but they were developed as a customized procedure to test the proposed hypothesis. For instance, there is no previous report on the visual analysis of the cracking pattern in castor seed coat, for associating the time for germination with seed weight for individual seeds, nor for the calculation of seed coat density based on estimated seed area and measured seed coat weight. I am sorry that I could not provide long-term established and citable methods for these procedures.

 

Reviewer: Line 95-96 required more detailed explanation

Author: I provided additional explanation for the method to detect and eliminate aborted seeds from the analysis (which were in the lines 95-96 of the previous manuscript version).

 

Reviewer: Line 114-116 type and model of used equipment should be stated

The microscope and camera used for taking the pictures were informed in the text.

 

Reviewer: What is behind the decision to use different cultivars in the experiment? The year of production and the year of the experiment must be stated.

Author: There was no technical reason for the choice of varieties to be used in the experiment, and I did not find a reason why the studies should be all performed with the same genotype. In the case of studies with selection for fast germination, as the selection involves Intellectual Property, the study was made with a variety that belongs to my own institution for which I should not apply to authorization from third parties. Another reason is because the other varieties were F1 hybrid seeds that could not be subjected to selection because of their heterozygosity in the F2 generation. I assume that these issues were not explained in the manuscript because they are not of scientific relevance and would not be helpful to the readers. Regarding the other experiments, as there was no previous evidence of relevant difference among germination profile among castor genotypes, I just used any variety that was on hand. I assume that the results from different experiments are not directly compared among them, but only inside each study. Then, there is no experimental problem with the use of different varieties for each experiment.

The dates for each experiment were informed in the manuscript.

 

Reviewer: Try to find a better connection between the results of your experiment and the results of other researches that you mentioned in this section.

The discussion was fully revised, trying to compare as much as possible the results of this study with previous reports in the scientific literature.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

　The paper “Studies on the germination and emergence of castor seedling” by Liv S. Severino reports the properties of germination and emergence of seedlings of castor. The author found that the best temperature for gemination of castor was around 31 °C and improving the time for gemination was strongly associated with the sed coat relative weight, but not morphological traits. Generally, the paper is well written although the methods for analysis is very classical. There are two major questions.

 

1. About the experiment in section 4.5 Selection for fast gemination altered castor seed morphology. I’m not sure whether the methods is correct or not (the number of samples are enough or not). How many times did the author repeat the experiments?

 

2. why the seed weight was reduced by three generation of selection for fast gemination?

 

3．Castor is the oil plant. therefore in addition to the yield of seeds, oil contents is also very important. In the paper on the agricultural field like this paper, is it better to measure the oil contents in seeds.

 

Minor

1. l536-545:　There is no figure number the author mention about. Please indicate the figure number.

 

2, Figure 7. It is hard to distinguish the cercle.  It is better to use colors for filling the circles.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your valuables comments. The changes made in the manuscript are highlighted with revision marks, and I provide additional explanations below.

Reviewer: About the experiment in section 4.5 Selection for fast germination altered castor seed morphology. I’m not sure whether the methods is correct or not (the number of samples are enough or not). How many times did the author repeat the experiments?

Author: The analysis of the experiment on morphological characteristics of seeds changing after the selection for fast germination was made on seeds obtained in another experiment, which was reported in Severino (2023) and took 2 years to be made. That was a long-term study that was not repeated. About the number of replications, the measurements were made in 310 seeds (10 plants x 10 seeds x 3 generations + 10 seeds of the control). I could not find a reference for the number of measurements necessary, but based on the data variability, I considered the measurement representative. By the way, the raw data used for this analysis will be publically available in a repository.

I agree with the reviewer on the necessity to confirm if this effect would occur if the experiment was repeated (in other environments and other genotypes). Anyway, a replication would require about three years of additional experimental work. I am considering that the current observations are valid scientific results. As usual, other researches will have the opportunity to repeat similar studies in the future to corroborate or refuse this hypothesis with additional evidences.

 

Reviewer: Why the seed weight was reduced by three generation of selection for fast germination?

Author: In the Section 4.5, I discussed some hypotheses on how castor seed morphology (size, caruncle, reserves) can be associated with the time for emergence. As this was just the initial observation of such association, I do not have an answer to this question. It will require additional work for testing hypotheses that could shed lights on this phenomenum.

 

Reviewer: Castor is the oil plant. therefore in addition to the yield of seeds, oil contents is also very important. In the paper on the agricultural field like this paper, is it better to measure the oil contents in seeds.

Author: Yes, I agree that seed oil content is a pivotal characteristic for this crop. However, it was demonstrated in previous reports that the influence of environmental factors on castor seed oil content is negligible. The objective of this study was focused on the time for germination. Surely seed oil content could be one of the drivers for the time of germination, but measuring this trait on individual seeds is laborious, and it was not considered for this initial investigation. For the continuation of the studies, it is an excellent suggestion to look into the amount of oil reserve and how it may influence castor seed physiology.

 

Reviewer: Minor corrections

Author: Thanks for the careful revision. The references to all figure and tables were revised, and the Figure 7 was corrected to fill the circles with easy-to-see colors.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript by Liv S. Severino present a new study which examines the germination and emergence of castor seedlings. The thematic is of interest and author did al lot of assessments and data analysis.

 Comments:

The Abstract should be more informative. In the abstract, write the research problem, the aim, very briefly the methodology, indicate the treatments.

Introduction. More information about  Ricinus communis is needed in the introduction. Please specify the botanical family, genus. What kind of environmental conditions does this plant like? What is the value and ecological benefits of Ricinus communis.

Results. Tables and figures are of good quality.

Discussion. The discussion and the problem of the article are clear.

Materials and Methods. The approach seems correct and the methodology used is adequate.

The conclusions are consistent with the evidence and arguments presented.

The English is clear and does not have any major spelling errors. But I'm not a native speaker.

 On my opinion this article deserves to be published after minor revision.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your time for reviewing this manuscript. The changes made in the manuscript are highlighted with revision marks, and I provide some explanations below.

Reviewer: The Abstract should be more informative. In the abstract, write the research problem, the aim, very briefly the methodology, indicate the treatments.

Author: I made some editions and did my best to provide details on the experiments. The editorial policy of Seeds requires an Abstract with no more than 200 words, and it was difficult to make some room for describing the methodology of the six different experiments reported in this manuscript. I hope the revised version of the manuscript meets your requirement.

 

Reviewer: More information about  Ricinus communis is needed in the introduction. Please specify the botanical family, genus. What kind of environmental conditions does this plant like? What is the value and ecological benefits of Ricinus communis.

Author: More details on castor plant were provided in the current version of the manuscript. As this is a cultivated plant, the emphasis was for the agronomical importance rather than the botanical or ecological aspects.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript has been improved.