Kinetics of Phosphorus Uptake through Roots of Habanero Pepper (Capsicum chinense Jacq. cv. Mayapán)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Now, all is ok.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

This manuscript reports the enzyme kinetics related to P uptake in Habanero Pepper plants. I think the manuscript is interesting and for the most part well written. The results are important to generate fertilization plans with more rational use of P. The document can be published after including the required adjustments.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

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

Manuscript "Dynamic of Phosphorus Uptake Through Roots of Habanero Pepper (Capsicum chinense Jacq. cv. Mayapán)" is very interesting.

General comments:

Authors determined two parameters of the kinetics of P absorption in habanero pepper plants in hydroponic system: maximum rate of ion uptake and Michaelis-Menten constant.


Detailed comments:
Description of statistical analysis is very poor. Lack is information about distribution of observed traits.
Line 121: "non-linear regression model"? It is not enough! Quadratic, cubic, logarithmic?
Quality of Figure 1 is very poor.
Quality of Figure 2 is very poor.


My suggestion:
Line 20: "1.00-mM P" "-"?
- 'x' - symbol not letter, across manuscript.
Line 50: "[11,12]." not "[11,12]"
Table 2 needs confidence intervals for particulat characteristics.
Lines 142-143: Table 3 not contained a correlations.
Table 4: letters after mean values not standard deviations.


Paper needs major revision.

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

In this manuscript, the authors try to chracterize the uptake of phosphorus in Habanero pepper plants. Plants are tretaed with 5 different concentrations of P. P uptake is measured as depletion rate from the medium, obtaining meaures of P uptake rate (mM cm-1 s-1) that can be elaborated with a Michaelis Menten equation form which, in principle, is possible to derive the parameters Imax and Km. Unfortunately the P concentrations chosen for the experiment were too few and not properly distributed. As shown in Fig. 2, 4 different concentrations gave a similar P uptake rate (close to Imax) and only 1 is informative to derive the Km. As a result, the fitting is very poor. Morevoer it is not explained how the fitting was done. The conclusion that the P uptake system characterized in this manuscript probably corresponds to a high-affinity transporter is thereore little supported by the data. Given that the Michaelis Menten curve of Fig. 2 is basically the only result of the manuscript, I think the experiment should be repeated with more P concentrations in order to derive a better estimate of the Km.

In general, the amount of data contained in this paper is rather low. The work might be improved by providing further elements of characterization. For example, protons are never mentioned in the manuscript while the P uptake system is likely to depend on protons as well, which would imply a pH dependence that may be characterized.   

 

Minor corrections:

line 43: substitute speed with rate

line 51: plasma membrane instead of plasmatic membrane

page 3, second equation: what is C’?

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.docx