Delineation of Physiological, Agronomic and Genetic Responses of Different Wheat Genotypes under Drought Condition

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors investigated the “Delineation of physiological, agronomic and genetic responses of different wheat genotypes under drought condition”.

 However, the authors have to explain the research problem clearly, and it is strongly suggested that first to describe the research problem and then explain how the authors will address their research question. Then, the message of this manuscript will be more effective and more explicit for readers.

Based on my comments below, I would recommend a major revision of the manuscript.

The abstract needs to be revised (e. g., give details of the main results and link your results systematically; moreover, write one or two sentences to highlight the importance of this study and name the methods to achieve the goal/aim described in the background).

The name the genes must be italic. Check throughout the manuscript.

Scientific names of crops must be italic i.e., Arabidopsis

The objective of the current study is not clear

What makes this study special?

Why authors have chosen the current topic for the study. The background information is lacking.

Please enrich your introduction section with recent literature

Materials and Methods, This section is fine.

I strongly recommend the authors to write results with exact significant values and then calculate percentage differences between best and worst treatments.

Provide melt curves (primer specificity curve) for each primer in a supplementary file or deposit in a repository.

I think authors should rethink what they write in the first paragraph and only summarize the main findings in view of the research questions. After this, authors can explore different aspects of the work in subsequent paragraphs and explain how their findings expand the envelope of knowledge, but first of all, authors simply need to state the main results without discussing their why and how or the relationships to the literature.

First of all, the reader needs a clear statement on what the study found. Moreover, it is suggested to discuss the main results in a logical way.

Further, add more recent literature and compare it with the obtained results.

Authors only added biological inferences which makes discussion section less attractive and non-supportive to results

Table 1 and 2: Move them to supplementary tables

Figure 8: Add error bars.

Check all references formatting

Author Response

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Editor/Authors,

The manuscript by Shah et al. is well in the scope of the journal and can contribute to overcoming or at least mitigate the problem of drought stress. However, it needs to be redrafted.

In the introduction: the first and second sentences repeat the content, please re-arrange it.
Please revise this sentence: "In general wheat is an ideal system to unravel the mysterious dynamics of drought stress that triggers various signaling pathways mediated by different genetic determinants".

Please add to the introduction what were the most important assumptions and aims of the work.
In Material and Method section, please provide the names of the studied genotypes and the characteristic features on the basis of which they were selected for the study (add additional columns in the table).
Please indicate statistically significant differences in the graphs.
Please change the discussion in terms of genotypes, why have so many varieties been selected if they are not exactly compared with each other? 

Author Response

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript titled “: Delineation of physiological, agronomic and genetic responses of different wheat genotypes under drought condition” is devoted to an important subject of studying wheat response to moisture stress. The material used is relevant and the experiment was well conducted. The results are informative and contribute to the knowledge of the drought stress response. However, some issues can be addressed to make the paper better reach its audience.

1. There is high degree of general skepticism among wheat community on pots experiments while studying responses to abiotic stresses and moisture in particular. In this case the study was conducted only one season. The pots size is not mentioned, neither the temperature profile during the experiment. Also not clear if the pots were under the field conditions of under cover. Not clear if the pots were periodically rotated within a replication to avoid the placement effect. The justification for publishing the paper based on one pot experiment is probably the depth of the study looking at so many diverse traits. However, the authors are encouraged to validate their result in the normal field experiment.
2. Table 1 with material can be expanded by providing additional information such as originating institution, year of release, area covered, environment grown to give better understating of what they are.
3. The dates of planting and harvesting shall be provided.
4. The authors selected several genotypes as being drought tolerant and others as being susceptible. However, there is no clear criteria for this selection. Explanation of the criteria and how they were identified is important. In drought stress the performance is normally judged by the degree of reduction of the target trait but in this case associations between the traits are given high priority.
5. One important adaptation trait is not mentioned and this is the length of vegetative period – number of days to heading and heading – maturity. It is a fundamental trait and if the genotypes differ by 7-10 days – they can not be even compared as they are subjected to stress at different stage of their development.
6. The figures 1-3 are perhaps better presented as tables with values of control, drought and % reduction.
7. The figure 4 is impossible to understand for a person with average intelligence. Better explanation shall be provided or other presentation method designed.
8. Figure 5. Normally two different biplots are made for two different environments and then traits associations are compared. Difficult to make sense of this figure.
9. Discussion may take a broader perspective without reference to figures. One of the topics is to elaborate on drought tolerant varieties in regard to their origin, area of cultivation, etc.

Author Response

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx