The Effect of Salicylic Acid on the Performances of Salt Stressed Strawberry Plants, Enzymes Activity, and Salt Tolerance Index
, Abdullah Alebidi 2, Khalid Almutairi 2, Rashid Al-Obeed 2 and Ahmed Elsabagh 1,2,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript focused on -The effect of salicylic acid on alleviating salinity stress of strawberry's growth, nutrients contents, proline, enzymes activity, yield, and fruits quality-
It is well written and clear to understand.
Some minor revision:
Fruit chemical quality section- please give more information about material and methods applied.
I suggest to remove the supposed total yield ha-1. This is a plot experiments.
Line 79 the sentence is broken up.
Line 269 typing error
Author Response
- The deleting of yield ha-1 will weaken the applied value of the research, in addition to the fact that its presence will give an indication of the economic return of the used treatments.
- The writing errors were reviewed.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript is an original paper that present effect of SA treatment on salt stressed strawberry plants.
English needs improvement.
The title is too long, it shows what analysis were done. The title should present a research hypothesis that has been successfully confirmed.
Abstract:
Line 10-13: Please rephrase this sentence i.e. Two pot experiments were conducted in two ..
Line 13-17: Please delete significant and these sentences could be clearer - please rephrase it.
Introduction:
Line 30: …up to 8337099 tons at ????? This sentence is unfinished.
Line 45: ….photosynthetic rate and content ????? This sentence is unfinished.
Line 45: is [11,12,13]as …. – lack of space
Line 45-51: The authors write that the effect of SA on the increase in tolerance to salt stress in strawberries has been confirmed, what is new in this publication then? Please, the authors should point out (emphasize) the novelity. I found more articles in Pubmed and other databases than those described in the manuscript, which discussed the influence of SA on the increase in tolerance to stress.
Material and Methods:
The methodology is very superficially described, both in terms of the experiment and the analyzes that were conducted. It requires clarification, supplementing the missing details. Some examples are given below:
Line 53: …in private farm… please give localization of this farm
Line 57-58: this sentence is not clear
Line 62: please give more details about the composition of the substrate and company
Line 64-66: this sentence is unclear …All strawberry plants were received, manually … ???
Line 68: „control (water)” – what is the composition of the water? Did the control water not contain NaCl by any chance? Do the authors know the composition of the water that they treated the plants?
1ine 67-71: How many treatments of NaCl were done? How long was the NaCl treatment? …there is only such information.. ”NaCl were applied once every day after day” What does it mean? The same question is for SA treatments i.e. how long did it apply?
Line 72-76: How many transplants were in each object, block? It’s not clear: “…to prevent overlaps between paper spray treatment” What does it mean?
Line 78-79: - this sentence is unfinished, please give more details.
Line 97: please give company for refractometer
What is full name of TSS?
Line 99: lack of space g 100g-1
How many plants were analyzed (how many biological replicates and technical relicates)? There is no such information in the methodology and table captions (n= ?)
Results:
The presentation of all results in the form of tables and the manner of their description makes it very difficult to analyze the obtained results. Perhaps it would be worth presenting more interesting results in the form of figures or graphs. Describing the results also requires some thought. I am not entirely convinced by the presentation of the interaction between SA and treatment with the appropriate concentration of NaCl - was the correlation calculated?
Line 131: Please improve English i.e …SA gave the highest mean value….
Line 147: is k should be K
Line 248: is Table 1 should be Table 3
Line 166: is the should be The
Line 173: What does 90 SA mean?
Line 206:is also should be Also
Line 213: is with should be With
Discussion:
It’s very hard to find novelty of presented research. As authors wrote “these results are in line with the results of [37, 36,9,30 etc…]
Line 262-265: Please rephrase this sentence – is too general
Author Response
- The title was rephrased.
- Lines 10-13 were rephrased
- Lines 13-17 were clear and there is no need to rephrase.
- All the grammatical or typing mistakes were reviewed allover the manuscript.
- Line 45 was rephrased.
- Lines 45-51
- The problem of salinity in agricultural lands varies in nature according to geographical areas. In our Arab region, we need more understanding of the nature of salinity on strawberry plants and the means by which to mitigate its negative effects, as strawberries are an important export crop in Egypt. We also calculated the salinity tolerance index for the various measured traits. This is not found with this diversity of traits in any of the research related to this topic. This is useful for researchers in the field of physiology and plant breeding ... and this is a new addition to the research, and I have highlighted this in the manuscript in several places (I underlined these points for you).
- Line 53 the farm location was confirmed
- Line 62 the composition of the used substrate was mentioned in line 68
- Lines 64-66 were rephrased
- Line 68 the chemical analysis of the used tap water was added.
- Lines 67-71 the number of NaCl treatments were mentioned in detail and the treatments of salicylic acid as well. "day after day" means every 48 hours. Anyway, I have been chang it.
- The full name of TSS was written
- It is hard for me to convert the results from tables to figures; however, the tables were clear.
- In discussion, it is possible to agree with other researchers in spite of differences in geographical properties of the researches.
- Line 262-265..... which sentence you want to shorten
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Authors introduced suitable corrections, that's why in my opinion the manuscript could be accepted.
Author Response
Authors are thankful for your check.
