Seed Set Patterns in East African Highland Cooking Bananas Are Dependent on Weather before, during and after Pollination
, Rony Swennen 3,4, Settumba B. Mukasa 1, Arthur K. Tugume 5, Jerome Kubiriba 2, Wilberforce K. Tushemereirwe 2, Michael Batte 3, Allan Brown 6 and Robooni Tumuhimbise 7,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1. More experiment design needs to be added, such as completely randomized design (CRD) or Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD), How many crosses are made, how many replicates?
2. It will be great to have an ANOVA table about a year, location, year by location to the seed set
3. it will be great if the author can modidy figure 2 by year/month + year to show the pattern across month and year.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.docx
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Point 1: More experiment design needs to be added, such as completely randomized design (CRD) or Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD), How many crosses are made, how many replicates?
Response 1: The experimental design used was an augmented design. However, for correlation, regression and PCA, I looked at seed set in relation to weather attributes. I believe typical research experimental designs are not applicable. Besides, the analyses were run separately for each of the three cultivars (Line 118 – 119).
The number of crosses for each cultivar is the number of observations denoted by ‘n’ in tables 3 and 4. The residual degrees of freedom in table 6 also reflect the number of crosses made
Point 2: It will be great to have an ANOVA table about a year, location, year by location to the seed set
Response 2: The co-authors agreed that we should focus on weather effects to have an in-depth discussion. We had an ANOVA and realized that months were significant (as expected), bunch size and year of pollination were also significant. This made the manuscript too long thus we focused on only weather effects. The study was conducted at only one location.
Point 3: it will be great if the author can modidy figure 2 by year/month + year to show the pattern across month and year.
Response 3: The trend we show in Figure 2 is the ideal temperature requirement during bunch development to have high seed set. Irrespective of the time of year, this is the trend required and this is the reason we suggest manipulations. We discuss this in lines 405 – 411.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
Overall the manuscript is well written, though the Discussion section is too long and could be simplified and made more clear. The significance of the work, however, is not well justified - while reading your manuscript I understood what and how you have done, but I am not convinced WHY you did it. Somehow you need to claim the importance of your work to the horticultural practice in the region and on a global scale.
Author Response
Point 1: Overall the manuscript is well written, though the Discussion section is too long and could be simplified and made more clear.
Response 1: Weather plays an important role for seed set in banana. The study found new finding of weather involvement in seed set before and after seed set. Therefore cutting short the discussion without significantly losing vital information is quite difficult. Is there a particular aspect, lines or paragraph that you feel should have been left out?
Point 2: The significance of the work, however, is not well justified - while reading your manuscript I understood what and how you have done, but I am not convinced WHY you did it. Somehow you need to claim the importance of your work to the horticultural practice in the region and on a global scale.
Response 2: The main focus of the study is on bananas. In lines 37 – 46, we highlight the importance of weather for seed set in banana. In lines 46 – 53, we highlight the problem that seed weather only explaining a small percentage of observation despite the importance. Lines 69 – 71, we justify the study. In the conclusion, we said that results have implication on all Musa spp. (Line 454 – 455).
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and suggestions:
- Correlations, multiple linear regressions and PCA have been correctly applied and the results properly interpreted.
- Line 221: „first four principle components” replace to “first three principle components”.
- Table S4, S5, S7-S14: a) „Analysis of variance means squares of a multiple linear regress” replace to „Analysis of variance of a multiple linear regression”, b) Under the Tables, add: "Regression, Residual and Change represent mean squares".
- Tables S6 and S15 should be discarded.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Point 1: Correlations, multiple linear regressions and PCA have been correctly applied and the results properly interpreted.
Response 1: Thank you for the complement.
Point 2: Line 221: „first four principle components” replace to “first three principle components”.
Response 2: Replaced in table 5 title.
Point 3: Table S4, S5, S7-S14: a) „Analysis of variance means squares of a multiple linear regress” replace to „Analysis of variance of a multiple linear regression”, b) Under the Tables, add: "Regression, Residual and Change represent mean squares".
Response 3: At the bottom of the tables, I have added “Mean squares are presented” was added to accommodate tables S7 – S14 which have a breakdown of the regression components
Point 4: Tables S6 and S15 should be discarded.
Response 4: I have left tables S6 and S15 for whoever might want to reconstruct the full ANOVA tables. Is there any particular reason why you suggested that they should be discarded?
