Effect of Salinity and Nitrogen Form in Irrigation Water on Growth, Antioxidants and Fatty Acids Profiles in Halophytes Salsola australis, Suaeda maritima, and Enchylaena tomentosa for a Perspective of Biosaline Agriculture

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors should include more information on the species studied

2.1 is just a list. Describe better

2.3 Plant treatmets? Complete the sentence or use italics

Author Response

The authors should include more information on the species studied

Response: Information about choice of species were added to the Introduction section(lines 50-59). Information about plant physiology within related genus is given in the Introduction section (lines 82-95).

2.1 is just a list. Describe better

Response: Precision about utilization and provenance of products were added (lines 106-116)

2.3 Plant treatments? Complete the sentence or use italics

Response: The experimental design was rewritten (lines 118-140) and a figure explaining it was included into the supporting information section (Figure S1)

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments to the authors

The reviewed publication concerns a very interesting area of ​​research, which is biosaline agriculture. In conditions of limited freshwater resources in the world, the search for plants that are highly resistant to increased soil salinity becomes a very important challenge for modern agriculture and food economy. In addition, an important research direction, which was also undertaken in the study, was the assessment of the content of antioxidants in terms of their use in the agri-food industry as functional food and in combating many civilization diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases.

Detailed assessment of individual parts of the work:

-Abstract;

This part of the work contains the necessary information concerning the topic of work, the obtained research results and the conclusions drawn.

-Admission

The introduction exhaustively describes the issues related to the topic of the work. The authors of the work, based on more than 40 items of world literature, presented the scope of research and experiments that have been carried out so far in the last dozen or so years, concerning the influence of salinity on the growth and development of plants from the halophyte group, especially their antioxidant properties and the mechanism by which these plants can survive under conditions of abiotic stress caused by high salinity. It should be emphasized that the mentioned literature data mainly concern species that are the object of research in the evaluated publication. At the end of this chapter, the aim of the work was formulated, which fully correlates with the topic of the publication.

- Material and methods

All five sub-chapters of this part of the article present in a concise and detailed manner the necessary information that characterizes the material and research methods used and applied in the experiment and the performed research. In the last, sixth section, the statistical analysis of the resulting data is described. Statistical analysis included, inter alia: analysis of variance, post-hoc tests and multiple comparisons for significant interactions between salinity and the form of nitrogen used.

- Results

This part of the work is very well prepared, I did not notice any factual or formal errors. The test results obtained from the conducted experiment were properly processed and described. To increase the transparency of the description of the results, the authors used rich factual material in the form of tables and charts. In addition, an attempt was made in this chapter to explain the obtained research results in relation to the earlier works of the authors of this work and other researchers. This approach facilitates understanding and increases the readability of the presented data for a potential reader.

-Discussion

A very well-designed chapter of work. The authors, in a detailed and at the same time synthetic way, discussed the results of their own research with the results of other researchers. It should be added that over 60 items of literature were used to discuss the results. A well-prepared discussion of the results contains a lot of important information that may be a source of further research directions regarding the reaction of plants from the halophyte group to excessive soil salinity and the possibility of obtaining antioxidant compounds used in combating many civilization diseases.

- Conclusions

The conclusions formulated by the authors of the work correspond to the topic and purpose of the work and the described research results. In addition, they contain a large practical aspect.

- References in the number of 112 items taken from journals with a high citation index exhaustively describe the issues raised in the study. These items are closely related to the topic of the work and, at the same time, current in terms of the date of publication.

Summary,

Despite the fact that the study presents the results of the research obtained from the one-year experiment, and therefore the formulation of final conclusions on this basis is not yet fully justified, however, their potential significance for further research also on other halophytic plants should be reflected in the publication of this study in a scientific journal.

I did not include any comments in the manuscript

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comments to the authors

 

The reviewed publication concerns a very interesting area of ​​research, which is biosaline agriculture. In conditions of limited freshwater resources in the world, the search for plants that are highly resistant to increased soil salinity becomes a very important challenge for modern agriculture and food economy. In addition, an important research direction, which was also undertaken in the study, was the assessment of the content of antioxidants in terms of their use in the agri-food industry as functional food and in combating many civilization diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases.

 

Detailed assessment of individual parts of the work:

 

-Abstract;

This part of the work contains the necessary information concerning the topic of work, the obtained research results and the conclusions drawn.

 

-Admission

The introduction exhaustively describes the issues related to the topic of the work. The authors of the work, based on more than 40 items of world literature, presented the scope of research and experiments that have been carried out so far in the last dozen or so years, concerning the influence of salinity on the growth and development of plants from the halophyte group, especially their antioxidant properties and the mechanism by which these plants can survive under conditions of abiotic stress caused by high salinity. It should be emphasized that the mentioned literature data mainly concern species that are the object of research in the evaluated publication. At the end of this chapter, the aim of the work was formulated, which fully correlates with the topic of the publication.

Response: We would like to thank you for your very encouraging advice. We have further improved the introduction by taking into account the comments of the various reviewers. We have not changed the objectives but we have clarified them. We have also removed some references to keep only the most important.

- Material and methods

All five sub-chapters of this part of the article present in a concise and detailed manner the necessary information that characterizes the material and research methods used and applied in the experiment and the performed research. In the last, sixth section, the statistical analysis of the resulting data is described. Statistical analysis included, inter alia: analysis of variance, post-hoc tests and multiple comparisons for significant interactions between salinity and the form of nitrogen used.

Response: We have also specified this part, especially thanks to a figure explaining the experimental design (Figure S1). Statistical part was not changed

 

- Results

This part of the work is very well prepared, I did not notice any factual or formal errors. The test results obtained from the conducted experiment were properly processed and described. To increase the transparency of the description of the results, the authors used rich factual material in the form of tables and charts. In addition, an attempt was made in this chapter to explain the obtained research results in relation to the earlier works of the authors of this work and other researchers. This approach facilitates understanding and increases the readability of the presented data for a potential reader.

Response: Thanks a lot for your positive feedback about the results. But due to another reviewer comment's, we reworked this part. We have removed the initial tables summarizing the combined effects of factors by graphics (3.2) (for each species). However, the initial tables were included within the supporting information section (Tables S3, S4 and S5).Concerning the attempts, we had to move it to the discussion (see thereafter in response to review n°3), but it keeps its importance.

 

-Discussion

A very well-designed chapter of work. The authors, in a detailed and at the same time synthetic way, discussed the results of their own research with the results of other researchers. It should be added that over 60 items of literature were used to discuss the results. A well prepared discussion of the results contains a lot of important information that may be a source of further research directions regarding the reaction of plants from the halophyte group to excessive soil salinity and the possibility of obtaining antioxidant compounds used in combating many civilization diseases.

Response: We re organized the discussion section notably according to the objectives that were better specified and to a new selection of priority data (see thereafter in response to review n°3). We hope the new discussion will suit you. We have kept the initial exhaustivity and the openness to the applied interest of research, but we think that it’s now better organized.

- Conclusions

The conclusions formulated by the authors of the work correspond to the topic and purpose of the work and the described research results. In addition, they contain a large practical aspect.

 

- References in the number of 112 items taken from journals with a high citation index exhaustively describe the issues raised in the s study. These items are closely related to the topic of the work and, at the same time, current in terms of the date of publication.

 

Summary,

 

Despite the fact that the study presents the results of the research obtained from the one-year experiment, and therefore the formulation of final conclusions on this basis is not yet fully justified, however, their potential significance for further research also on other halophytic plants should be reflected in the publication of this study in a scientific journal.

 

I did not include any comments in the manuscript

Response: We also reworked the conclusion and perspectives due to a better specification of objectives in the introduction section and openness toward applied objective.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper by Certain et al. entitled ”First study of the combined effect of salinity and nitrogen form in irrigation water on growth, antioxidants and fatty acids profiles in halophytes Salsola australis, Suaeda maritima, and Enchylaena tomentosa for a perspective of biosaline agriculture” deals with salt tolerance, antioxidants and fatty acids profiles and their relation to different form of nitrogen supply. In general topic and experiments performed are novel and interesting. However, I recommend major revision, because paper is very difficult to follow. First of all I suggest to short little bit the title (eg. just skip ‘first study of’). Then, describing results I would suggest to focus on announced in the title ‘combined effect of salinity and nitrogen form in irrigation water on growth, antioxidants and fatty acids profiles’ in halophytes under study. Authors obtained a lot of interesting results and unfortunately they described and documented them almost all without selection dedicated to the main aim. At the end of introduction hypothesis and starting questions are missing. I would suggest to prepare the graph, which explains experimental design. Now description of the experiment is not clear. Results should be as short as possible without repetition in the text of the data presented in the tables and graphs. Please select the most important tables and figures - max 6 tables and figures in total in the main text. I would prefer graphs instead of tables. Discussion should be related to the main hypothesis and questions (which are unfortunately missing). In the present form authors just discuss results and stress not problems but single species responses. References also should be limited to ca 60 the most current and important papers (now we have 112). This not a review paper. Concluding, I think authors should make one more effort and pay more attention on preparing the final text and present results in more friendly and understandable way. Anyway, in my opinion results are very interesting and are worth to be published but manuscript should be totaly revised. More detailed remarks I put in the manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for judicious comments.

We hope you will be satisfied with this new version of the manuscript.

Please see the details of the answers in the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for effort and all corrections. Now text is much more clear, more easy to follow and therefore interesting. I do not prefer bullets in the results, as usually we read more fabular description of the results (or discussion) in the published papers. Authors improved discussion but introduced bullets into results. Finally, I decided to leave this to the responsibility of the scientific editor of Agronomy. I have only one more suggestion. Is it possible to mark statistical differences between compared treatments on Figs 1-3 by eg. letters? These differences are described in the text, as I noticed, but figures should be selfexplained.

Author Response

We thank you for your encouraging advice.

Bullets were added in some of the results to clarify the source of the information and avoid duplication.

We have added letters on the figures, thank you for these improvements