Different Traits Affect Salinity and Drought Tolerance during Germination of Citrullus colocynthis, a Potential Cash Crop in Arid Lands
, Kareem A. Mosa 1,3, Sameh S. M. Soliman 4 and François Mitterand Tsombou 1
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Shamleh et al. have provided a study about exploring the effects of seed collection time, the temperature of incubation on salinity, and drought tolerance during the seed germination stage of different Citrullus colocynthis accessions. The topic is interesting, however, there are following crucial points that can be considered by authors to increase the value of the manuscript and may be readability. First of all,
- Title can be changed. It seems too long. It can be “Different traits affecting the salinity and drought tolerance during germination of Citrullus colocynthis, a potential cash crop in arid lands”
- I would like to suggest to authors that the novelty and the future prospect of the study should be mentioned in the abstract and the introduction.
- Please avoid the # sign in the abstract or the manuscript for the ‘number’ of genotypes. For example, it can be directly written as Accession 10.
- Also, please mention the details of the used accessions. For example, their place of collection and their accession name etc., so that the other researchers can utilize this material for further research.
- Line 26 Please mention what do you mean by ‘summer seeds, and seeds incubated at higher temperatures’. I understand what you mean, but it came randomly in the abstract.
- Line 30 determinantal. Correct the spelling.
- Please read and cite the following articles to provide some more citations on drought, salinity, and C. colocynthis (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-020-02479-9; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11090808). Discuss your results in the light of your previous study as well (https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox11040656).
- Line 376- What is Si? Is it silicon? Please correct the sentence.
- Authors have discussed about the salinity and drought tolerance of the three accessions. Please explain was there any control genotype with proven tolerance towards drought and salinity. If not, how the accessions used were considered as tolerant. It seems that one of them was tolerant among the three and there was no Control cultivar. Authors can mention it somewhere in the manuscript.
I do believe that the manuscript can be accepted once the authors address the mentioned points and enrich the manuscript with crucial information.
Author Response
Shamleh et al. have provided a study about exploring the effects of seed collection time, the temperature of incubation on salinity, and drought tolerance during the seed germination stage of different Citrullus colocynthis accessions. The topic is interesting, however, there are following crucial points that can be considered by authors to increase the value of the manuscript and may be readability. First of all,
- Thanks for your positive opinion of our work
- Title can be changed. It seems too long. It can be “Different traits affecting the salinity and drought tolerance during germination of Citrullus colocynthis, a potential cash crop in arid lands.”
- Thank you, as suggested, we changed the title to “Different traits affect salinity and drought tolerance during germination of Citrullus colocynthis, a potential cash crop in arid lands.”
- I would like to suggest to authors that the novelty and the future prospect of the study should be mentioned in the abstract and the introduction.
- We added the novelty and future prospects in the abstract. In the introduction, we highlighted the novelty of the work and how the results would help domesticate this important native desert plant as a cash crop in the dry marginal habitat.
- Please avoid the # sign in the abstract or the manuscript for the ‘number’ of genotypes. For example, it can be directly written as Accession 10.
- We removed the # sign before all accessions
- Also, please mention the details of the used accessions. For example, their place of collection and their accession name etc., so that the other researchers can utilize this material for further research.
- All accessions are different individuals growing in one natural habitat. According to a previous study (Al-Nablsi et al, 2022; reference 40), these accessions showed high genetic diversity. In addition, the seed size and color, fruit size, weight, and color vary greatly among the different accessions (please refer to the “Materials and Methods”).
- Line 26 Please mention what do you mean by ‘summer seeds, and seeds incubated at higher temperatures’. I understand what you mean, but it came randomly in the abstract.
- In L9-11 of the abstract, we defined time of seed collection (summer and winter) and incubation temperature (20/30 and 25/35 ℃)
- Line 30 determinantal. Correct the spelling.
- Thank you, we changed “determinantal” to “detrimental” throughout the text”
- Please read and cite the following articles to provide some more citations on drought, salinity, and C. colocynthis (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-020-02479-9; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11090808). Discuss your results in the light of your previous study as well (https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox11040656).
- We cited all publications that assessed salinity and drought tolerance in colocynthis.
- We also cited the first article that you suggested that assessed drought on lanatus (doi.org/10.1007/s13205-020-02479-9, Hamurcu et al., 2020).
- The second article (doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11090808, Alzarah et al., 2021) is already cited as the reference [18]
- We discussed our results in the light of our earlier study (doi.org/10.3390/antiox11040656, [42]) (please see the discussion L306-311 and L329-335)
- Line 376- What is Si? Is it silicon? Please correct the sentence.
- Si is the first author of the reference number 69. We changed Si to Si et al. [69] to remove confusion.
- Authors have discussed about the salinity and drought tolerance of the three accessions. Please explain was there any control genotype with proven tolerance towards drought and salinity. If not, how the accessions used were considered as tolerant. It seems that one of them was tolerant among the three and there was no Control cultivar. Authors can mention it somewhere in the manuscript.
- The three accessions used in the present study grew under the same environmental conditions, i.e., belong to the same populations). However, they are genetically and morphologically different (Al-Nablsi et al., 2022 [40]). Therefore, we don’t have a control genotype. The drought tolerance was assessed relative to each other. Accession 10 was more drought and salt tolerant than the other two accessions
I do believe that the manuscript can be accepted once the authors address the mentioned points and enrich the manuscript with crucial information.
- Thanks for your critical revision and valuable suggestions. We hope we addressed all of your comments/suggestions.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear editors,
I read the whole manuscript and I saw that the order are not following the standards of the journal (Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions (optional)). They should reorder them if the manuscript is finally accepted.
Alongside that, I propose minor revisions, as the manuscript is well structured and discussion is supported by data.
I saw also that some paragraphs may be so long, so it would be good to split some of them taking as reference the ideas they expose in.
Author Response
I read the whole manuscript and I saw that the order are not following the standards of the journal (Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions (optional)). They should reorder them if the manuscript is finally accepted.
- We followed the format of the MDPi journal, in which the “Material and Methods” section comes after the Discussion section. However, we are open to putting the sections as suggested
Alongside that, I propose minor revisions, as the manuscript is well structured and discussion is supported by data.
- Thanks for your positive opinion of our work
I saw also that some paragraphs may be so long, so it would be good to split some of them taking as reference the ideas they expose in.
- Thank you, we split some long paragraphs into two
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have revised the manuscript as per the comments. It can be accepted in its present form.
