Plants Traditionally Used for Making Utility Products by Forest Dwelling Gaddi and Sippi Tribes in Bhaderwah Tehsil of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, India

1

J&K is not a UT, it is a state (30).

The erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir was re-constituted into two Union Territories viz. UT of J&K and UT of Ladakh on 31-10-2019. At present J&K is a UT of India.

2

Do not repeat keywords already present in the title, replace with relevant keywords (37)

Key words replaced accordingly.

(Keywords: Agricultural tools; cultural importance index; Himalayas; traditional knowledge; tribals.) (page 1).

3

Suggested spelling correction of Zizyphus and Terminalia (97)

Corrections made.

(Ziziphus sps., Terminalia sps). Page 3.

4

A methodology or survey related details, data collection and curation and data analysis should be presented before writing the Results section (106)

Materials and Methods section is placed after Introduction and before Results section.

5

Discuss in methodology where and how these (F value) analysis were done (203)?

Discussed in methodology.

(Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was performed using R Studio version 1.2.1335 (R Studio 2019) to test the hypotheses and find the significant difference of knowledge of PUPs vis-à-vis gender, age, and education level of informants.

Two-tailed Correlation analysis (at significance level, α = 0.05) was also performed to find the relationship between age and education level of informants with respect to PUPs knowledge.) Page 5

6

So, what is novelty of this work (319), if the results are completely concurrent with the earlier work done in this region and adjoining area? Authors need to highlight the novelty of work (319).

Certain trends are common observations in most of the ethnobotanical studies e.g., elder informants are more knowledgeable than younger informants. This finding does not deal with novelty of the present study. Novelty has been mentioned under the separate heading ‘Novelty and future prospects’ in Discussion section. (Page 11).

7

Where the results of correlation presented? Mention about the analysis in the Statistical analysis section in the Methodology (328)

Mentioned about analysis in statistical analysis section (Page 5).

8

This section (Materials and Methods) should be presented after the first Introduction section for better connectivity and understanding of the readers (375).

Materials and Methods section is placed after Introduction section. (page 3).

9

Improve the fig. quality, provide coordinates in the main fig. or study area file. Alternately, fig. can be removed to reduce the manuscript size as the coordinates are already given in the main text (Page No.10)

Figure of Location map of study area is removed based on comments received from Reviewer.

10

Mention the unit of population. Is it the intact number or in hundreds of the given number (Table 1, Page 12)

Correction made and the unit of population is mentioned as “No. of persons”. It is intact No. and not in hundreds (Page 12)

11

Correction suggested in names of Impatiens glandulifera Royle and Quercus leucotrichophora A. Camus (Table 3, Page 15)

 Corrections made.

(Impatiens glandulifera Royle.) Quercus leucotrichophora A. Camus. (Page 14)

12

The information presented in table 4 is further depicted in different figures. Since the size of the manuscript is bit larger, authors can present some of the tools in images and some tools can be presented as supporting information (507)

Images of some of the PUPs are removed and the images are re-arranged properly to save space which has reduced the size of the manuscript.

13

Photographs of 3-4 figures can be merged in a single figure and presented as a, b, c, d ….  for saving space and reducing the number of figures (527).

Photographs of Fig. 4, Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 are merged in a single Fig. and presented as Fig. 3 (a,b,c) for saving space and reducing No. of figures. (page 30)

14

Suggested correction as ‘PUPs’ instead of ‘PTPs’ in Fig. 13 (a,b) (Page 46).

Corrections are made in the captions by mentioning new legends as PUPs/PTPs.

(Fig 9. (a&b) Correlation analysis between age and knowledge of Plant-based traditional products / Plant-based utility products (PTPs/PUPs) (9a), and education level and knowledge of (PTPs/PUPs) (9b) (Page 35).

15

This seems to be a non significant or non linear co-relation (Fig. 13 (b), Page 46).

The graph depicts linearity sufficient to draw inference.

REVIEWER 2 (Response to the notes placed in review pdf)

S.No

Reviewer’s comments (Line No. in review pdf.)

Authors’ response Authors’ response (corrections made in revised manuscript are highlighted in yellow).

1

Hard to understand, pls. clarify (30-31).

Correction made.

(The present study documented 43 plant species as new ethnobotanical records from UT of J&K for their use in making traditional plant products).

 (page 2).

2

Avoid use of words of title in keywords (37).

Corrections made.

(Keywords: Agricultural tools; cultural importance index; Himalayas; traditional knowledge; tribals.) (page 1).

3

Spelling correction ‘produce’ (50).

Correction made.

(non-timber forest products) (page 2).

4

And why not the two ethnic groups (464).

Gaddi and Sippi tribes are closely related and intimately associated with each other. These tribes are similar to each other vis-à-vis their cultural background, customs, traditions, traditional attire, have same exclusive mother language (gadyali language), have same occupation (rearing flocks of goats and sheep) and are found living together in same inhabitation. It is believed that they have same origin. The only difference between these tribes is that Gaddis belong to upper social caste whereas Sippis belong to lower social caste. Hence, these tribes possess 100% similar traditional knowledge and thus a joint ethnobotanical survey was carried out on Gaddi and Sippi tribes by including informants from both the tribes in single sample of the population.

REVIEWER 2 (Response to the comments received in word file).

5

This study was carried out with surveys of two distinct ethnolinguistic groups but the results are presented together. I think it would be important to check whether there are differences in the use of plants between the two groups and I think the authors have data for this.

Gaddi and Sippi tribes are closely related and intimately associated with each other. These tribes are similar to each other vis-à-vis their cultural background, customs, traditions, traditional attire, have same exclusive mother language (gadyali language), have same occupation (rearing flocks of goats and sheep) and are found living together in same inhabitation. It is believed that they have same origin. The only difference between these tribes is that Gaddis belong to upper social caste whereas Sippis belong to lower social caste. Hence, these tribes possess 100% similar traditional knowledge and use same type of plants in their day to day life. Thus, a joint ethnobotanical survey was carried out on Gaddi and Sippi tribes by including informants from both the tribes in single sample of the population.

6

In the methodology, the authors mention that they chose the interviewees using the "snowball" system, but then mention that they randomly selected the people to be surveyed. They should explain better what they did

Snowball sampling method was adopted to identify highly knowledgeable informants so as to collect maximum and accurate information. The population sample obtained by snowball method was larger than required, hence some of the informants were randomly selected while others removed from the snowball sample to obtain final sample. This was done to reduce the size of the final sample. This would not affect the results of the study.

7

The photographs of the PUPs could be of better quality and the font size of their names is excessively large.

The quality of the photographs has been improved a bit. The font size is also reduced. Photographs are re-arranged properly to save space.