Agronomic Performance of Sweet Orange Genotypes under the Brazilian Humid Subtropical Climate

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors, This are a good reports on the project on rootstocks evaluation. 
In the attached document I have made some suggested edits.
I suggest to remove the heat map as I don’t see any advantage or deeper insight gain by this.
Also, try and reduce the length of Discussion to focus on your data and not include general knowledge on the different topics.
 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We really appreciated the comments made on our ms. Our project seeks to evaluate multiple sweet orange cultivars (early and mid-season) grown on a single rootstock, the ‘Rangpur’ lime, which is historically one of the most used rootstocks by the Brazilian citrus industry, in southern Brazil. All changes addressed by you were highlighted across the ms. The heat map was removed from the ms and the discussion section were revised as suggested.

Trunk indices were calculated based on the relationship between trunk diameter above and below the graft union.

All data were tested for normal distribution and homogeneity at P ≤ 0.05, and then submitted to analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by the comparison of means using the Tukey’s post-hoc test at P ≤ 0.05. Regarding the comments, the 0.01 and 0.001 are ≤ 0.05, which agrees with this affirmation.  

Let us know if you need something else!

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript deals with a relevant subject to Horticulturae, related with the agronomic performance of fifteen sweet orange genotypes. The ms is very interesting, well written, with an interesting set of well-presented results and adequate discussion. I recommend that the manuscript should be accepted after minor revision.

 

 

Specific points:

 

1. Soil analysis, fertilization, amount of water and information about insecticide used in the experiment should be presented.
2. Authors should only use the yield efficiency data of 2019, as canopy volumes of 2017 and 2018 were not determined (trees grew from 2017 to 2019).
3. Alternate bearing indices data should be presented and discussed.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

First we would like to thank you for the comments, which have improved our ms. Below we explain all changes we have made:

The soil details as well as the fertilization, water amount, and insecticide details were given in the M&M section.

Also, we calculated the yield efficiency based on the data of 2019, and the alternate bearing indices were added and discussed in our revised ms.

Please find all this changes in the revised ms!

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript by many, many Brazilian authors describes a Citrus Sweet orange plantation experiment in Parana, in Southern Brazil with appropriate humid subtropical climate. Th e topic fits the journal horticulture.

The academic editor may have concerns with so  m a n y , ma n y , m a n y authors (looks like 10) and again m a n y , m a n y references (100?), which is normally typical for Indian manuscripts.

Most of the English is fine, except a few flaws such as

Major issues

• Reduce the number of authors
• Reduce the number of almost ten authors to maybe 4-5 – no need to mention the person who drove the car to the field, any BSc, MSc and PhD student in the last ten years and your section director, your department director and your institution director- only “hands-on people”- the other should be mentioned in the Acknowledgement or the next paper
• In the Abstract, mention that Citrus plantations were prohibited in the past due to spread of Citrus canker
• In the Abstract, say that the target is orange juice, not the fresh fruit market (if so=?)
• THis determines whether we look for export quality of juice or fresh fruit
• In the Introduction, say what the objective is: Orange juice or fresh fruit- very confusing-
• Line 111, add one sentence, which you chose Rangpur lime as a rootstock e.g. over Citrange?
• Dramatically reduce the number of references- for one statement e.g. “Rangpur lime is a better rootstock than citrange for sweet orange in canker infected humid areas but with lower fruit/juice quality” you only need o n e reference
• Delete those local references in Portuguese- (or provide a translation- both is fine)
• Reduce the number of references from ca. 100 to 30-40 – only the pertinent references- this is more references than a review and a waste of time and space

Minor language issues

• Line 43, delete the word “largely” for better English (Grammar)
• Line 46, delete the word “crop” , as one consumes the fruit, not the crop
• Line 54, delete word “plant” to read just “healthy” for better English
• Line 62, add -s to read maintain-s and evaluate-s

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

First we would like to thank you for the comments, which have improved our ms. Below we explain all changes we have made:

The project was conducted in southern Brazil (northwestern of the state of Paraná) across seven consecutive years, which resulted in a partnership with several Brazilian Research Institutions located in the states of São Paulo and Paraná, composed by a committee board of eight members (the referred authors of the ms). All authors have contributed deeply on project and ms execution. Moreover, we have found various recent articles published in the Horticulturae journal with eight or more authors, they are listed below for checking:

• Identification and Fine-Mapping of Clubroot (Plasmodiophora brassicae) Resistant QTL in Brassica rapa
• Correlation of Soil Characteristics and Citrus Leaf Nutrients Contents in Current Scenario of Layyah District
• Integrated Volatile Metabolomics and Transcriptomics Analyses Reveal the Influence of Infection TuMV to Volatile Organic Compounds in Brassica rapa
• Effects of NIR Reflective Film as a High Tunnel-Covering Material on Fruit Cracking and Biomass Production of Tomatoes
• Mitigation of Commercial Food Waste-Related Salinity Stress Using Halotolerant Rhizobacteria in Chinese Cabbage Plants
• Composition of Zingiber officinale Roscoe (Ginger), Soil Properties and Soil Enzyme Activities Grown in Different Concentration of Mineral Fertilizers

The number of references was reduced as you have proposed. We decided to keep 62 references across the ms, to have a better discussion of our results. We also observe that several articles published in Horticulturae have presented more than 60 references.

Please find all the changes made in the revised ms. Thanks again for your contribution!

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

the manuscript has slightly improved in that the ca.
100 references were "reduced" to ca. 60 references.

In my experience, such a large number of references
is only acceptable for reviews, not research papers

Similarly, the excessive number of authors
is not even acceptable for reviews.

Please advise on the MDPI policy
and that of the academic editor.