Foliar Brassinolide Sprays Ameliorate Post-Silking Heat Stress on the Accumulation and Remobilization of Biomass and Nitrogen in Fresh Waxy Maize
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The current study entitled “Foliar Brassinolide Sprays Ameliorate Post-silking Heat Stress on the Accumulation and Remobilization of Biomass and Nitrogen in Fresh Waxy Maize” is interesting. Although the experiment is well conducted, yet I suggest a minor revision due to the following deficiencies.
Minor Concerns
Abstract
- Introduce the topic in 1-2 lines.
- Give a problem statement.
- Quantitative data is also important to support your conclusion. Please provide some quantitative data in terms of percentage significant increase or decrease in the abstract. I don’t know why authors have not declare maximum increase when they applied statistics to evaluate significant changes.
- Give future prospective in a single line.
- As per standard suggestions please avoid to use title words as keywords.
Introduction
- Please follow the title in the introduction section i.e., brassinolide, heat stress and then fresh waxy maize and finally importance of study, knowledge gap, hypothesis and aims.
- Please give more explain about fresh waxy maize in line 69 and mention the goals of cultivation and use this crop.
- Also, provide a novelty statement at the end of the introduction. What new things authors have done?
Material and Methods
- Please report the characteristics of YN7 and JKN 2000 hybrids and the reason for choosing this variety.
- Remove capital letter in phrase Experimental Farm in line 83.
- What is the reason for using this amount of brassinolide (0.25 mg/L, 100 mL/plant)?
- No details about irrigation are provide. Please provide Irrigation periods during growth stages.
- No details about use of fertilizers are provide. Please provide types of fertilizers used during growth stages.
- Use the equation format to write formulas 1 to 6. This writing style is not interesting.
Results and Discussion
- Report the maximum and minimum yields values by the number and do not limit yourself to the percentage of decrease and increase. Report your research outputs accurately to be interesting and useful to readers.
- The order of Figures 4 and 5 in the manuscript should be corrected.
Conclusion
- Please give a conclusive conclusion.
- Major portion of results is incorporated in the conclusion. Please remove that.
- Also, give clear-cut recommendations and future prospective regarding this research.
- The final goal of the research, which is to investigate the yield and yield components of maize with and without the use of brassinolide under heat condition, to this section should be given more attention.
- The English language needs extensive editing from native English speakers. I suggest a proofread from native English speaker to improve the quality of language and write sentences clearly.
Author Response
please see attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript titled “Foliar Brassinolide Sprays Ameliorate Post-silking Heat Stress on the Accumulation and Remobilization of Biomass and Nitrogen in Fresh Waxy Maize” investigated the effect of exogenous brassinolide application on maize yield parameters under heat stress. They found that BR application at the silking stages can relieve HS on fresh waxy maize yields by improving the remobilization of biomass and nitrogen to grain and increasing the harvest index.
The first recommendation to the authors is to please make the graphs more understandable the small lines in black and red colour are not easy to understand.
The Brassinolides information must be improved in the introduction section.
L101 – 80 C and 105 C must be adjacent.
L124 – Data analysing software must be precise.
For all P<0.05, the P must be italic.
Discussion must be improved, and it needs deep discussion.
Author Response
Please see attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors made the necessary corrections and improved the manuscript.
