A Two-Year Field Experiment for the Integrated Management of Bread and Durum Wheat Fungal Diseases and of Deoxynivalenol Accumulation in the Grain in Central Italy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript contains valuable information on a current and important topic in wheat production: the management of the mycotoxin deoxynivalenol. I would draw attention to the following points that could improve its understanding.

1. Why was data analysis not a factorial design? Once the study evaluated 15 wheat varieties and five treatments (three fungicide combinations plus two controls) in three consecutive years.
2. Caught my attention by the fungicide combination C, which included the application of a strobilurin (QoI) fungicide (Pyraclostrobin) mixed with an SDHI fungicide (Fluxapyroxad) at the flag leaf stage (BBCH 39). There was no adverse effect of strobilurin used at BBCH 39 stage on the effectiveness of the Metconazole + Prochloraz mixture applied at BBCH 65 stage in reducing DON. This could be highlighted in the discussion.

 

Line 31: Triticum aestivum L. and T. durum Desf., respectively

Line 38: “quality and hygiene/health” sounds a little confusing.

Regarding updated fungal names, I would recommend checking the Index Fungorum. For instance:

Current name: Puccinia recondita (Synonymy: Puccinia triticina)

(http://www.indexfungorum.org/names/NamesRecord.asp?RecordID=167445)

Current Name: Zymoseptoria tritici (Synonymy: Septoria tritici)

Current name: Parastagonospora nodorum (synonymy: Septoria nodorum)

 

Lines 123-124: it is informed that the fungal inoculum was applied prior to fungicide application; however, on lines 162-162, it is informed that the inoculation was 24 h after the second fungicide application at full anthesis (BBCH 65). This needs to be clarified better

Line 124-126: the study evaluated 15 wheat varieties and five treatments (three fungicide combinations plus two controls) in three consecutive years, suggesting a factorial design. However, it was not done this way. An analysis with factorial design would help better assess the effect of variety, treatment, and year and the interactions of these variables.

Table 1: informing the meaning of BBCH39 (flag leaf stage) and BBCH65 (full flowering: 50% of anthers mature) in the footer of Table 1 would help the reader, making the table more self-explanatory

Figure 1, The Y-axis labels are very small, which makes them difficult to read. Também,

Figure 2: I am not entirely convinced of the need for this figure, it would suffice to inform in the text. Differentiating colors (cultivars) is not easy to do.

Tables 2 and 3 legends: different letters in each line.....

Table 2: in the line of the cultivar Marakas, in 2018/2019, there is no result of the statistical analysis. Was it not significant?

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

please find our response to your valuable comments in the attached file. 

Best regards. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Althought I believe that two-year field experiments are not enough to elavorate strong conclusions, specially when climatic contitions are different, this research presents significant results. Maybe, it would be interesting to repeat the research further years in order to get more results and to state stronger conclusions.

However, the research is very well expain, as well as the results are clearly presented. Conclusions are enought adecuate to the results they obtained.

Also it could be interesting to try a F. graminearum deoxynivalenol producer strain to artifical inoculation of wheat for Fusarium head blight (FHB).

The main observation I have, is that DON anlalysis was performed by ELISA, and non-chromatographic methods use to give not very confiable results. Also, I believe that it could be interesting to analize modified-DON molecules, and NIV incidence, as F. culmorum is able to produce high amounts of NIV. 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

please find the response to your valuable comments in the attached file. 

Best regards. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf