Improving of Cherry Fruit Quality and Bearing Regularity by Chemical Thinning with Fertilizer

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a decent study of chemical thinning in cherries. The material for a good paper is there, but as written, it needs substantial work. Primary concerns include poor presentation of data in tables and figures; potentially inappropriate statistical procedures; and misappropriation of references.

Specific comments:

Overall:

English good but could use some editing for wordsmithing. Details on methods and results not entirely clear. Data in Table 4 is especially confusing.

Line 28, 31: t * ha ^-1

33: Those references don’t really relate use of dwarfing rootstocks to a decline in quality. They relate high yield index to decline in quality. The others in this paragraph do back up the thesis that crop load management is necessary for adequate fruit quality.

47: Numbered reference, please.

48: “…allow growers to obtain…”

55: “axis,”

56: What are “draft” rootstocks?

57: What does “pretty large” mean? <Make a comparison to other tree types, e.g., seedling rootstocks.

70: “…blossom burning…”

81-83: sentence should be reworded.

84: Is that the only disadvantage? Maybe “One disadvantage of…” would be better.

89-100: Good summary

102: just use the years, or rather, say, “…conducted during the 2009 through 2013 growing seasons…”

117-118: You already stated the doses in the numerical outlie. Either delete that or delete this sentence in the text.

Table 1: The table title does not relate to the data contained therein. The tiles should reference percent of fruit removed.

133: You may want to include this reference: Vaszily, B. and Gonda, I., 2010. Training and maintaining spindle crowns in cherry production. International Journal of Horticultural Science, 16(3), pp.51-53.

Table 2: It may be helpful to differentiate between daytime and nighttime temperatures, or at least give a range.

Note: frost during bloom 2009 & 2011

149: “…which has had…

156: What about frost in 2009?

163: “Yielding and tree…” Change to “yield” globally

165: did you measure yield / ha or calculate based on a sample of harvested trees? If the latter, please explain that.

168: Has this alternate bearing index been used in cherries?

173” “…indicates the completely alternating yield, with a full crop in one year and zero yield in the next.”

187-194: Is there a reason why you chose so many size classes? Are these related to specific marketing categories?

198: “Extract Fruit soluble solids… Method question: were you able to obtain a full 5 ml of juice from one cherry?

210: You should be converting this trunk circumference into trunk cross sectional area (TCSA). This is referenced in Table 5, but there is no mention of the conversion from circumference nor how it was done.

217: It is not clear what “IV-IX” means. Same in table 3. Please use either month name, abbreviation, or Arabic numerals.

Table 3: Mean temperature for a whole year is a pretty meaningless statistic.

227: “Correlation factor scans and determination analysis”…is this just a correlation statistic?

231: “Tree yield” is not measured in t/ha, it is measured in kg/tree. Do not extrapolate into bigger units unless there is an appropriate reason to do so, a lot of precision can be lost.

233-243: “was caused by”: did you measure or assess flower damage after frost? If not, you’ll need to say, “…likely caused by…” That’s the general comment for this section. The analysis is good, but still speculative.

No further wordsmithing will be completed in this review. The English is good but could use an editorial review.

Figure 1 formatting, the title in particular, does not make sense.

Table 4: A lot of problems here. Column 1 should read, “Percent of set fruit that dropped prematurely”. Column two makes no sense. Didn’t you apply all treatments on the same day? Did you count each bud/blossom as you were treating them? There shouldn’t be any difference in the % of buds open for each treatment. Control has a value, but wasn’t control no treatment? Ratio of developed fruit to number of flowers- when was this data collected? At harvest? Table is long and hard to read, especially with the header only on one of the pages. This would be a better figure.

254: How does 2% ATS compare to the rates you used?

262: “…kg/cm²…” cm² of what? Also, “… effects of chemical thinning…”: this statement is based on which parameter?

Statistics (Tables 4, 5, : Were these data evaluated separately for each year? The Duncan’s separation values appear to fall across multiple years. That is an incorrect analysis. Statistics should be completed within each separate year. If combining across years, another method (repeated measures) is appropriate. Further scanning of the paper indicates more questions of what was tested against what. Tables 6,7,89 appears to show data analyzed across year (instead of within years).

Tables (all): the footnotes do not adequately explain what the statistical model was for each analysis. Were data analyzed with years or across years? Footnotes need to say more than, “two-way analyses of variance; 3 one-way analyses of variance; data marked with the same letter are not significantly different at α=0.05 (Duncan’s test).”

Figure 4: Reverse I and II in the figure caption. I should be first. For these data, discuss the ramifications some more. If thinned trees produce a lower mean yield for each year, but are less variable / biennial, does that lead to improved farm profitability? Does a regular but smaller crop give better return than bigger crops every other year?

Figure 2 should be Figure 5. The data analysis is hard to understand as the data popouts overlap different bars. Caption that describes the statistics is incomplete. Data in the table and the legend should be in the same order.

Figures 8-9: same comment as above, it is hard to see what is being tested against what. Roman numerals to indicate years do not help, please just use the year. Figure 9 in articular is missing key information in the caption.

Table 6: “Annual mean value” is a calculated variable, not an independent statistic as was measured for the treatments. It cannot be included in the Duncan’s analysis.

351-354: Can you reference a statistic, e.g., a p-value range, to indicate that color was not affected by any treatments?

358-363: This section belongs in introduction, the data and results in this experiment do not relate to it.

365: “…Fruit firmness at harvest varied across the years of study,…” Did you test that by ANOVA across years?

378-387: This is what I’m referring to in my comment re: Figure 4 (above). If there is a lower total yield but the fruit harvested are more valuable, does that make economic sense?

397: Make it clear that this statement is based on the literature, not on the results of your study. You are following this up with your own data in the next paragraph.

404”: What are “annual shoots”? Do you mean “mean annual number of shoots”?

433-435: This is on apple, not cherry.

439: Reference [28] does not reference deregistration of thinning materials.

440: Reference [84] does not detail anything about the environmental  impact of ATS.

436-444, and elsewhere: in many places in the paper, review articles are used as citations where a specific claim is made, but that claim may not be made in the article. References should be checked globally against the claims they are making in this paper.

478: Check reference. Should read, “Whiting, Matthew D., and David Ophardt. "Comparing novel sweet cherry crop load management strategies." HortScience. 2005, 40(5): 1271-1275.”

481: This is an Acta Hort paper. Please use proper Acta Hort citation, as you did in ref. 12 (without the All Caps title, as you have in ref. 20). No further reference style checking was completed.

References, continued: all references should be checked for compliance with style guidelines, there are many inconsistencies.

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

General Remarks

The manuscript entitled: 'Improving of cherry fruit quality and bearing regularity by chemical thinning with fertilizer' is presenting interesting subject and providing valuable applicable information. However, I have one main concern on the applied statistical analysis and interactions among them. The tables and figures are difficult to read. The statistic analyse is not clear. The authors indicate that they used a two or one factorial randomized complete block design with 4 replications and during four seasons (2009- 2012). However, the factors used in the study are not indicated in the document. I suppose that they must be ‘year’ (4 levels) and ‘treatment’ (5 levels). The authors did not show clearly the statistical results on (1) the main effect of each factor and (2) the possible interaction effects among these factors on the evaluated parameters. They should show the main effect of each individual factor and then present the interaction among factors only if significant. I suggest re-analyzing the data and present tables and figures in a more readable form according to the used statistical approach. Also, the authors may separate the results and discussion chapters in order to more clearly describe the obtained results and re-write the a deeper discussion. Therefore, I recommend a major revision, especially the statistical analyses and the format of tables and figures before the acceptance of this manuscript. The style of the measurement units must be revised through all document (e.g. there should be a space between numbers and units, g/L or kg/cm² should be g L^-1 and kg cm^-2)

Specific comments

Line 47-48: to revise citation style

Line 98: to use acronym ATS

Line 168: ABI=….

Line 198: titratable acidity

Line 221-222: (Table ??)   

Line 233: I suggest using the term ‘fruit set’ rather than ‘fertilization’

Line 245: Legend Figure 1

Line 288-289: to discuss why TSS can be influenced more by the course of weather conditions than by the year. Both are related

Line 295-296: to revise citation style

Line 404: pc?

Author Response

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a good revision of the paper with the main shortcomings from the original corrected. There are still some issues with data presentation in the tables and figures, and one analysis (fruit size classification, table 8) that needs to be a one-way analysis. Otherwise, well-done.

Table 1: Please change hand thinning date format to "01.06"

Table 4: statistics run on yield per area are inappropriate- they are the same analysis and results as yield per tree, but were done on calculated data. They can be presented  to put the data in context, but should not have a mean separation variable.

Figure 5 I: something isn't right in your separation, Control (49.7) is bc, HT (44.9) is c. Those should be switched, but check your stat program output to be sure.

Figure 6,7 legend: reverse TA and TSS/TA so they are in the same order as in the figure. Your scale for TA sasys 0-0.8%, but values in the bars say 22.9-24.4. The colors should be swapped in the figure bars.

Figure 9: Where is the legend that shows what each column is referencing?

General in tables and figures: "one-way analyses of variance; data marked with the same letter are not significantly different at α=0.05 (Duncan’s test)." This should reference where in the figure or table the reader is to compare values. "data (in the same column / row/ colored bar/ etc. marked with..."

Table 8: why all the discontinuous mean separation letters? a,b,g,i,k? This two-way variance isn't described correctly. What two factors are you looking at? This should be a one-way analysis for each row.

Author Response

The answers are given in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The comments from the reviewers been primarily addressed in the revised manuscript. But there are still some issues in the tables and figures that needs to revise.

Line 151-153: What are the differences between the ratio 1 and the ratio 3? How was the percentage of fruitlets drop counted?

Line 229: “One or two-factor analysis” change to “one-factor analysis”

Table 4: I suggest delete kg/ha from the table 4. kg/tree and kg/ha are the same analysis and results, and, in addition, the kg/ha are presented again in the figure 5.

Figure 5: to check the Duncan analysis. Maybe there is a mistake in the letters of Control (49.7 bc) and HT (44.9 c).

Figure 6 and 9: to reduce the size of the graphs or to create two figures. The legend is missing in the figure 9.

Table 7 and 8: The separation should be between treatments for each row within a same category. What two factors are analysed? I suppose that is a mistake and it should be a one-way analysis.

Author Response

The answers are given in the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf