Investigation of Two QTL Conferring Seedling Resistance to Fusarium Crown Rot in Barley on Reducing Grain Yield Loss under Field Environments

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors

I made comments, suggestions and questions directly on the Ms. The thematic is of great interest as cereals are staple crops. Under the climatic changes yield can be highly reduced what represents a threat for the humanity.

Still, I considered that some parts are not clear enough for the reader.

Kind regards

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Many thanks for helping us with this manuscript. I am very grateful to the detailed suggestions from the reviewers. I find most of the suggestions very helpful and incorporated them in the revised manuscript. The followings are detailed point-to-point responses to the suggestions:

Point 1. (Line 25) Replace “barely to barley”– The suggested change made (Line 25);

Point 2. (Lines 34-37) Crop rotation is a recommended practice to reduce the incidence of plant pathogens. I understood that the authors wanted to mean that, despite the use of crop rotation, the incidence did not decrease because the crops used are all hosts of the fungi specied responsible for FCR. Is that? If yes, I would suggest the authors to better clarify. – The suggested change made. We rewrote the sentence and added one reference (Lines 33-36, 326-328);

Point 3. (Line 37) “semi-arid or semiarid” – We replace the semiarid by semi-arid (Line 37);

Point 4. (Line 38) From 6 to 10, all references but two are old. There are more recent publications reporting the presence of Fusarium species responsible for FCR – The suggested change made. We deleted an old reference and added two new ones (Lines 37, 338-343);

Point 5. (Line 45) Introduce here: The 8th International Conference on Applied Science and Technology (ICAST 2020)AIP Conf. Proc. 2290, 020009-1–020009-18; https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0027398. – The suggested change made (Line 43);

Point 6. (Line 57) Why only one reference if the text states "different geographical origins"?

I suggest giving more information as Pariyar, S.R., Erginbas-Orakci, G., Dadshani, S. et al. Dissecting the Genetic Complexity of Fusarium Crown Rot Resistance in Wheat. Sci Rep 10, 3200 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60190-4. – The present study focused on Fusarium crown rot resistance in barley. I believe that the cited reference was adequate as it is the only published paper on identifying resistant sources from more than 1,000 genotypes representing different geographical origins in this crop species;

Point 7. (Lines 57-59) The references from 23 to 30 are all from the same research group. This limits the scope of the study. – My understanding is that all QTL reported in barley so far are from our group and other relevant references do not exist;

Point 8. (Line 61) This sentence is not clear. Which two isolines? Resistant and susceptible? it is not clear at this stage. Please clarify!! – The suggested change made. We clarified the two isolines were resistant and susceptible isolines (Line 55);

Point 9. (Line 79) This is a review article. Better to cite the authors of such a study. – The cited reference here was the first one to report that data on 3BL resistant QTL in wheat reduced the percentage of whiteheads in the field conditions;

Point 10. (Line 97-98) In summary: a. 10 set of NIL; b. 10 BC1F8; c. 15 BC3F6; d. (AWCS276 x AWCS079) backcrossed with 10 varieties?? or are these the BC above referred? How were these different seeds displayed in the CSIRO field in 2017, for instance? Had you 10+10 plots in 2017? and 10+10+15+??? in 2018? – We clarified the materials used in each year in Lines 103-109. 10 sets of NILs and 10 BC1F8 lines were assessed at two field sites in 2017. 10 BC1F8 lines and 15 BC3F6 lines were assessed at two field sites in 2018. Six varieties were used as controls in these field trials;

Point 11. (Line 130) 150 plants.m-2 or plants x m-2 – We clarified this in Line 109. It is replaced by 150 plants/m²;

Point 12. (Lines 137-142) I suggest the authors to submit a diagram of the trial design. An article serves to disseminate the knowledge. Therefore, it should be of easy ready reading and understanding. This should be written in a way that others could implement and it is not.– The suggested change made. We added a supplementary figure as an example to clarify the trial design;

Point 13. (Line 199) why 1 if you had 4 field trials? id you consider 2 per year and that is why d.f =1? Did you check the effect of the year? – We clarified this in Line 167. Ten pairs of NILs were assessed in 2017 at two locations, so the d.f. here is 1;

Point 14. (Table 1) I suppose that this is Fp treatment. Could you clarify? why 1 if you had 6 Fp isolates?– We clarified this in the Table 1 and replaced ‘Inoculum’ with ‘Inoculation’. The inoculum means Fp treatment. In the field trials, we used six Fusarium isolates to make the inoculum but only two treatments (Fp-inoculation and non-inoculation) were applied (please refer to Lines 99-100);

Point 15. (Line 223) This should be in the y-axis of figure (b) – The suggested change made (Lines 181-182);

Point 16. (Line 224) ‘Thousand kernel weight’ to ‘TKW’– The suggested change made (Line 182);

Point 17. (Line 250) From this table, one can see that in Narrabi DI seems to be lower. The same for the difference. Could you elaborate on this aspect? Is there a location effect? – I suspect that the different farming practices and different rainfall might cause such differences;

Point 18. (Table 3) why is here df=3?– We clarified this in Line 209. The data for the BC lines were obtained from four field trials, so the d.f. for trial is 3 here;

Point 19. (Table 3) why is 30 for the Genotype – We clarified this in Lines 106-109. A total of 31 genotypes were assessed including 10 BC1F8, 15 BC3F6 and 6 varieties. The 10 varieties were used to generate the BC populations;

Point 20. (Line 269) Why was not BC-06 also considered? – We clarified this in Lines 216-218. Because the differences between BC1-06 and average yield of varieties were not significant, we did not include the line here;

Point 21. (Line 270) Why hasn't this bar the SD? – That bar represents the average yield of the varieties, so we do not think it is appropriate to provide SD here;

Point 22. (Line274) It needs better explanation. Why did you not consider BC1-04 and BC1-06 in fig 3c? – We clarified this in Lines 219-221. The differences between those lines and average yield of varieties were not significant, so we did not include those lines here;

Point 23. (Figure 3) the graphs have no reference to fig 3a, fig 3b...Please add a, b, c and d – The suggested change made. We added the numbers into Figure 3;

Point 24. (Line 359) in lines 53-54, it is stated that barley generally does not produce whiteheads. Why did it happen in your trials? – We clarified this in Line 286;

Point 25. (Line 368) 36 and 37 were the references used in MM for the way used to obtain NILs –We clarified this in Line 291. The two references reported the development of the NILs used in this study.

I thank you  again for the constructive suggestions and hope that the revised manuscript is suitable for publication.

With Kind Regards,

Chunji

Reviewer 2 Report

This study manily focused on the influence of the known resistance loci derived from seedling assays on the barley grain yield loss under field environments using NILs and BC populations.

I wonder how to perform the inoculum? the inoculated barley  if or not transplanted the field? and how long after the inoculum to the field?

What is the reason caused to  the different decresed grain yield loss between 1HL and 4HL in NILs? Why TKW reduction was significant between 1HL-R and 1HL-S, but not between 4HL-R and 4HL-S?

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Many thanks for helping us with this manuscript. I am very grateful to the detailed suggestions. I find most of the suggestions very helpful and incorporated them in the revised manuscript. The followings are detailed point-to-point responses to the suggestions:

Point 1. I wonder how to perform the inoculum? the inoculated barley if or not transplanted the field? and how long after the inoculum to the field? – We added the details in Lines 119-120. The inoculum was delivered to each furrow at the rate of 2 g per metre of row just above the seed during seeding;

Point 2. What is the reason caused to the different decreased grain yield loss between 1HL and 4HL in NILs? Why TKW reduction was significant between 1HL-R and 1HL-S, but not between 4HL-R and 4HL-S? – We clarified this in Lines 281-283. We suspect the mechanisms of these two loci might be different which potentially caused such differences in grain yield loss and TKW reduction.

I thank you again for the constructive suggestions and hope that the revised manuscript is suitable for publication.

With kind regards,

Chunji