High-Throughput Plant Phenotyping (HTPP) in Resource-Constrained Research Programs: A Working Example in Ghana
, Richard Oteng-Frimpong 1,*, Doris Kanvenaa Puozaa 1, Emmanuel Kofi Sie 1, Masawudu Abdul Rasheed 1, Issah Abdul Rashid 1, Agyemang Danquah 2, Darlington A. Akogo 3, James Rhoads 4, David Hoisington 4, Mark D. Burow 5,6 and Maria Balota 7
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript from Kasim et al. shows the viability of a low-cost high throughput plant phenotyping (HTPP) system (based on open-source software) to phenotype the effects of early and late leaf spot diseases on several groundnut genotypes. The subject is of foremost importance since a significant part of the world (the one most in need of plant breeding and therefore of high throughput pant phenotyping) cannot afford the skyrocketing price of commercial HTPP systems. The Introduction covers adequately the subject and clearly states the aim of the work. The Materials and Methods section is comprehensive and very didactic. Results are sound and well discussed. The conclusions are supported by the data. Therefore, the manuscript should be accepted, with only a few minor amendments:
- The title is too long and confusing; please consider eliminating “…showing prospects and resources available”
- Consider using “vegetation indices” instead of “HTPP indices”
- The abstract is not clear; before start describing the results all relevant experimental details (e.g., number of genotypes in each population, number of locations, years of experiments) must be given; please rephrase line 27 to 31.
- Line 57: “Africa” instead of “African”.
- Line 91: “having” instead of “had”.
- Line 138-139: Please, rephrase.
- Line 169-170: Why did you record the HTPP data 169 only in Nyankpala?
- In many biplots of PCA legends are overwritten and cannot be read; please edit them manually.
- Avoid using “et al.” in the Reference list; the three first author must be always referred.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for the comments. The suggestions given have all been addressed.
The HTPP data was recorded only in Nyankpala because, the certification required to fly a drone in the other locations was not ready at the time the field experiments were ongoing.
Thank you,
Kassim.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript is well written and shows a high and efficient method to follow and discriminate genotypes and the impact of leaf sport on groundnut.
The only main point to correct is the form of tables and figures, you should include in each of them what the different acronyms means and the statistical analysis means when necessary.
There are a quite a lot of acronyms along the document and sometimes is difficult to follow.
Attached the specific places to be improved.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very for the comments. Your suggestions have been taken into account and all corrections made.
Kind regards,
Kassim.
