Effect of NaCl on Morphophysiological and Biochemical Responses in Gossypium hirsutum L.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
accept as it is.
Author Response
Thanks for your considerations
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
In this version, the authors have answered most of the questions I asked last time, and the paper has been significantly improved, but there are still some issues to deal with.
The authors have not revised the abstract. As I mentioned last time: The main results of this paper are not well summarized in the Abstract, and the results of the four germplasms screened in this paper in the determination of morphological indicators, physiological and biochemical indicators are not clear.
In the Results part, the authors selected six genotypes to analyze, why they selected these genotypes?
In the section‘3.1.2 Root length’. Please check the data in the sentence: ‘At control level, Cyto-515 (G50) had longest roots (20. 63 cm) followed by S-9 (G15) (19.3 cm) and CIM-595 (G39) (19.2 cm) while VH-339 (G27) had shortest root length (11 cm).’ At 150 and 200 mM levels, which genotypes showed better performance?
In the section‘3.1.3 Fresh shoot weight’: I can not find the Ghouri and VH-259 in Figure 3C. Similar mistakes were also found in other figures, please check.
Cluster analysis: I think that the result of k-means analysis shown as a figure may be better.
The numbers of the subheadings in the manuscript are still confused.
The numbers of the attached figures should be renamed.
There are many formatting problems in the paper, and the author needs to revise it carefully.
Author Response
Attached herewith
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
Most problems have been solved well. Just a few minor problems:
The serial numbers of Figure 6 to 8 in the figure legends are wrong, why the changed into 16 to 18? I can not find the Figure S1 to S3.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Salt stress is one of the important abiotic stresses that affect plant growth. With the influence of climate environment and unreasonable irrigation, the saline soil area is still increasing all over the world. Therefore, it is of great significance for cotton production to develop new germplasm suitable for planting in saline-alkali land. In this study, a completely randomized experiment was conducted to evaluate the salt tolerance of 50 cotton germplasms. Combined with morphological, physiological and biochemical indexes, four salt tolerant germplasms were selected, which could be used to improve the salt tolerance of cotton breeding in the future. The conclusion of this paper has certain application value, but there are still many problems in writing and presentation of results.
Abstract
The main results of this paper are not well summarized in the Abstract, and the results of the four germplasms screened in this paper in the determination of morphological indicators, physiological and biochemical indicators are not clear.
Line 23: O in H2O2 doesn't need subscripts
Line 46: Estimation shoul be estimation
Line 47: Salt should be salt
Line 49: the slash in Na+/K+ doesn't need superscripts
Materials and Methodology
Completely randomized design was used in this study. But how many pots were planted per germplasm in each treatment?
Line 94: deleted and
Line 94: the EC of control was 1.48 dS/m, what the EC value of the salt treatment?
Line 114: biochemical should be physiological
Line 122-150: Are there differences of these methods from previous studies? If they are same, I do not think it is necessary to list all the detailed procedures.
Line 145-146: add the reference.
Line 153: the subleading title should be 2.7.
Line 154-156: In this part, the authors should describe the methods for processing the results in detail.
Results
The morphological and physiological indexes under different NaCl concentrations were determined in the paper, but I did not see the phenotypes of different germplasms after salt treatment. Even if the index data of 50 germplasms cannot be displayed, the indicators of 4 germplasms with strong salt tolerance can be selected as part of the results. Most of the results in the paper are presented in tables, but I think some results are better presented using pictures. Meanwhile, the results can be described separately by several subheadings, because the results are somewhat confusing now. The authors clustered germplasm at all three salt concentrations. Why did they do this? In my opinion, I suggested that the authors might summarize the different indexes first, and then clustered the germplasm into different categories according to the results, and finally obtained the germplasms with strong salt tolerance. In short, the results are somewhat confusing.
Line 162: What do the abbreviations represent in the table 2?
Line 165: The 50 germplasms were divided into 5 clusters. What was the basis of the clustering?
Line 168: Tables 3 and 4 can be reversed.
Line 168: The data in the tables all lack units in the MS.
Line 172: Tables 5 and 6 can be reversed.
Line 178: Tables 7 and 8 can be reversed.
Discussion
I think the discussion is too simple and does not do a good job of discussing the research results in depth.
Reviewer 2 Report
Salt stress is one of the important abiotic stresses that affect crop yield. Screening salt-tolerant materials and cultivating salt-tolerant varieties are important measures to improve cotton yield in saline-alkali soil. This study was aimed to determine the salt tolerance of 50 Gossypium hirsutum accessions and select salt tolerant accessions by using hydroponic culture with different NaCl treatment. It is an interesting topic. However, the data analysis and processing method in this paper is not reasonable. I advise to use the relative value of investigated traits to conduct the salt tolerance level evaluation instead of analyzing three salt levels separately.
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript entitled "Effect of NaCl on Moprho-Physiological and Biochemical Responses in Gossypium hirsutum L.' by Shaheen and colleagues describes the assessment the tolerance of different Gossypium hirsutum germplasms to salt.
Here are the reasons that lead to my decision of rejection.
The work in not new (see this reference for example: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0156398). The authors in this paper state that "Cotton (Gosspium hirsutum L.) is classified as a salt tolerant crop". The authors fail to cite this paper among the 33 references presented. And to present more studies instead of continuously presenting the big picture and big number (one or two sentences would be sufficient). Also, the authors failed to make an essential relation between the concentrations of salt used and the salty soils that they refer to. Why 100, 250 mM. Also, they fail on one of the basic scientific rules - the detailed description of the experimental procedure for other to reproduce. Despite the relation and extrapolation between using hydroponic and soil is given in one short sentence with a reference, the authors also fail to state and elaborate why they prefered this approach in not directly in soil. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach? They call plants but in reality during the transition from soil to hydroponics, they are called seedlings. Moreover, there are papers describing the grow of cotton directly in hydroponics avoiding the seedlings to undergo stress during the transition and, more importantly, that the roots are not damage which this fact is disregarded by the authors. We know from our experience that both situations affect latter results.
However, cotton growth is not, uniquely, related its ability to grow in salt conditions - it's about the fiber and the quality. How relevant is to have cotton germplasts that grow in salt conditions but the fibers cannot be used? The authors failed to discuss the reason why they did not reach the mature plant and measure fiber quality. Although the authors want to publish this as a first introductory paper, they should have mentioned this in the discussion.
Also how would they transfer that to soil? How they expect this transition from soil to hydroponic back to soil (?) to affect cotton? From the agronomical point of view, this might be economically not vailable and laborius, unless the fiber quality is consistently high.
The results are largely undescribed for all the figures and tables. The authors use the vague term" certain traits" which is less informative for an expert reader (be it a reviewer or a colleague in the field). The discussion sounds more as results description rather than a more wide discussion about the impact of their discoveries.
If this manuscript would have addressed these questions abovementioned rather that making big claims, it could be a relevant contribution for the cotton growers in general.
Minor: typos (including the title!) and description of "centrain traits (very vague term). There is no information about the phenotype (there is not such thing as morpho-physiological and no description about it.). The images look terrible. Figure 1 A is missing the label!
