Review Reports - Thiamine and Indole-3-Acetic Acid Induced Modulations in Physiological and Biochemical Characteristics of Maize (Zea mays L.) under Arsenic Stress

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Authors have significantly improved the manuscript based on my suggestions.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Point 1: Authors have significantly improved the manuscript based on my suggestions..

Response 1: The authors are grateful to your comment regarding improvements in manuscript

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

The manuscript "Thiamine and Indole-3-Acetic Acid induced modulations in physiological and 2 biochemical characteristics of maize (Zea mays L.) under arsenic stress" have been improved. However, some modifications should be done

line 14 : Please check "030"

line 99: "The" should be "the"

line 153: Please check "030"

line 196: "ml" should be "mL"

lines 134, 392, 403, 410, 412, 416: 100ppm should be "100 ppm"

line 356: add "," after "However"

line 283: 100ppm should be "100 ppm"

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

Point 1: line 14 : Please check "030"

Response 1: Done as per direction

Point 2: line 99: "The" should be "the"

Response 2: Done as per direction

Point 3: Line 153: Please check "030"

Response 3: Done as per direction

Point 4: line 196: "ml" should be "mL"

Response 4: Done as per direction

Point 5: lines 134, 392, 403, 410, 412, 416: 100ppm should be "100 ppm".

Response 5: Done as per direction

Point 6: line 356: add "," after "However"

Response 6: Done as per direction

Point 7: line 283: 100ppm should be "100 ppm"

Response 7: Done as per direction

Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Review of the manuscript “Thiamine and Indole-3-Acetic Acid induced modulations in physiological and biochemical characteristics of maize (Zea mays L.) under arsenic stress” by Atif et al. submitted in September 2022 to Sustainability:

After the author's revision, the quality of the resubmitted manuscript sustainability-1957068 has been improved. But there are still some problems that need to be solved.

Below I list several comments that I hope are considered to be constructive.

Abstract:

The effects of As stress on plant growth, biomass, and shoot nutrient ions have been widely documented. In the part of the abstract, the author used a lot of words to describe these results (Line 15-23). However, the influence of thiamine and IAA seed priming treatments on the growth of maize was poorly presented. Overall, the abstract is poorly written, does not highlight the key findings, and needs to be rewritten to focus on the subject of this study. In addition, I didn’t understand the meaning of these expressions in lines 15-23 (32.97, 30% 46.18, 54.54%...).

Materials and Methods

Line 132 organic matter 81%?

Line 132 saturation percentage 32?

Line 134 inorganic

Line 138 the size of the soil particles?

Line 139 each treatment with six replicates?

Line 170-272 this part was too redundant, some parts should be combined and simplified.

Results

Line 276 pls change the ppm to mg/kg, ug/g, or mg/L in the whole manuscript.

Line 278 pls revise the expression of the number in brackets.

Line 441 pls revise the table to meet the requirements of academic journals

Line 629 pls re-colorize figures 6 and 7 to make these easier for reading

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

Point 1: After the author's revision, the quality of the resubmitted manuscript sustainability-1957068 has been improved. But there are still some problems that need to be solved. .

Response 1: Authors appreciated your comment with best regards

Point 2: The effects of As stress on plant growth, biomass, and shoot nutrient ions have been widely documented. In the part of the abstract, the author used a lot of words to describe these results (Line 15-23). However, the influence of thiamine and IAA seed priming treatments on the growth of maize was poorly presented. Overall, the abstract is poorly written, does not highlight the key findings, and needs to be rewritten to focus on the subject of this study. In addition, I didn’t understand the meaning of these expressions in lines 15-23 (32.97, 30% 46.18, 54.54%...).

Response 2: The expressions in line 15-23 were added according to direction of Reviever 1 in previous revisions in abstract section. These expressions indicates the percentage increase or decrease against 100 mg/kg arsenic as compared to control as mentioned. But according to your directions, authors revised the abstract carefully.

Point 3: Line 132 organic matter 81%?

Response 3: organic matter was 0.81% and typo was corrected

Point 4: Line 132 saturation percentage 32?

Response 4:saturation percentage may be of different range of different texture give different values as mentioned 32 %.

Point 5: Line 134 inorganic

Response 5: Properly mentioned as inorganic nutrients of soil saturation extract

Point 6: Line 138 the size of the soil particles?

Response 6: Soil texture was mentioned properly with its components

Point 7: Line 139 each treatment with six replicates?

Response 7: The each treatment with three replicates for each variety so each variety contain 36 pots and two varieties studied in experiment contained total of 72 pots as also Mentioned in Material and Method section

Point 8: Line 170-272 this part was too redundant, some parts should be combined and simplified.

Response 8: Needful done

Point 9: Line 276 pls change the ppm to mg/kg, ug/g, or mg/L in the whole manuscript

Response 9: Added as per direction

Point 10: Line 278 pls revise the expression of the number in brackets.

Response 10: Needful done

Point 11: Line 441 pls revise the table to meet the requirements of academic journals

Response 11: Done as per direction.

Point 12: Line 629 pls re-colorize figures 6 and 7 to make these easier for reading

Response 12: Done as per direction

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

Please find below my comments/suggestions:

Change keywords. Keywords should not be similar to the title.

Add some numerical results in abstract. Avoid all general statements.

The author should logically arrange introduction part to several paragraphs with each paragraph stressing one point, and to emphasize why this work is necessary to the research community. Moreover, recent and updated literature must be added. In particular, introduction part should also tell us whether such analysis has been carried out in elephant grass, and what are the differences between the results of this work and previous findings. This is an important question to prove the necessity of this work.

The materials and methods (M&M) part should describe concisely how this experiment was performed, and should be divided into subtitle, such as experimental design, material development, the detailed method to perform analysis. Why authors did not determine the yield attributes? Yield is one of the most important aspects.

On which basis authors have chosen both maize verities for experimentation?

Formatting of the tables is not correct.

Please provide RAW DATA in a repository or as a supplementary file.

The discussion provides good overview and compares these results to similar studies of elephant grass in the literature. This section could be better organized by grouping studies according to whether they agree or disagree with your results and they read as a rather haphazard list at present.

Add a solid future prospects statement at the end of the conclusion section instead of a general statement.

Reviewer 2 Report

I believe there is quality behind the data of the authors but was ultimately disappointed with the authors’ presentation of their work. This manuscript is only a preliminary draft. Some of the tables in the manuscript are incompletely displayed and unreadable. My major concern about this paper is the experiment design and statistical method. I am not sure whether the maize plants were grown in the soil or solution. How about the fate of the arsenite in the soil? The experimental design is very complex with three factors and therefore the statistical section needs to be described in detail, however, the authors use only a few short sentences in the article to do so. Therefore, it is difficult for me to assess the appropriateness of the statistical methods and therefore the conclusions of the paper. The authors also do not explore their data to its fullest within the discussion and should have looked at pre-existing work on the subject to help with this exploration. I must therefore suggest that you reject this manuscript and hope that the authors will improve it before resubmitting it to another journal.

Reviewer 3 Report

introduction section should be re-written to increase its clarity.

Moreover, tables should be re-dimensioned to make them fit in the file