Exogenous Salicylic Acid Optimizes Photosynthesis, Antioxidant Metabolism, and Gene Expression in Perennial Ryegrass Subjected to Salt Stress

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The overall manuscript is relatively well written but there are a number of typographical errors. For example perennial ryegrass is incorrectly spelled in the title and there are a few style issues in the abstract where there are some unneeded spaces. As I mentioned these are very minor things that can be corrected. 

 

A few other things need to be addressed/included before this manuscript can be published. 

Line 94: What size perlite was used? Was it 0.5 mm, 2 mm diameter particles, etc?

Line 111. a citation for "based on previous studies" needs to be included. 

Line 119. How was the SA actually applied to the plants and what kind of spray carrier volume was used? In other words was this fairly dilute spray carrier or concentrated droplets?

Line 129: replace the word resamples with remaining samples

Line 130 replace the word was with were

Line 230 replace the word analyze with analysis 

Line 276: This comment applies to all of the tables. There is a footnote that states "Means with same lowercase letters within columns at each treatment or "uppercase letters" written within each row..."  I could not find any tables where any uppercase letters existed. Did I miss something? If not this needs to be removed. 

The rest of the manuscript is relatively well written - there are a few places where the results and discussion get a bit wordy and repetitive but the message is still fine. 

 

Lines 468-472: there are some misspellings for words like Methodology, Supervision and Writing.  

Line 474: Seems some information related to funding was omitted

 

 

Author Response

August 10, 2022

Dear Editor Ms. Evelyn Zhang

Thank you for your letter of August 9, 2022 and the reviewers’ comments regarding  our manuscript entitled “Exogenous salicylic acid affects photosynthesis, antioxidant metabolism and gene expression in perennial ryegrass subjected to salt stress” (ID: agronomy- 1853320). Thank you and reviewers for the great effort and excellent reviewing. We have carefully revised the manuscript following your directions and Reviewers’ comments/suggestions. Please find our responses to Reviewers as follows:

Responses to Reviewer #1:

Thank you for your excellent reviewing and hard work! We have carefully revised the manuscript following your directions.

Line 94: What size perlite was used? Was it 0.5 mm, 2 mm diameter particles, etc?

Authors (A): Dear reviewer, perlite with particle size of 3-6 mm was used in the experiment, and we have added it to the manuscript. (line 95) Sorry for the confusion.

Line 111. a citation for "based on previous studies" needs to be included. 

A: The reference has been added (Arfan et.al 2007) (line 113).

Line 119. How was the SA actually applied to the plants and what kind of spray carrier volume was used? In other words was this fairly dilute spray carrier or concentrated droplets?

A:  We used the foliar spraying method. 250 ml of salicylic acid solution of each concentration was evenly sprayed on the foliar surface. The specific methods have been re-described in the manuscript (page 3, line118-121).

Line 129: replace the word resamples with remaining samples、Line 130 replace the word was with were、Line 230 replace the word analyze with analysis 

A: The above words have been replaced (page 3, line 134, 135, 237).

Line 276: This comment applies to all of the tables. There is a footnote that states "Means with same lowercase letters within columns at each treatment or "uppercase letters" written within each row..."  I could not find any tables where any uppercase letters existed. Did I miss something? If not this needs to be removed.  

A: We apologize for the confusion. There are no uppercase letters in these tables. We have redescribed the table notes.

Lines 468-472: there are some misspellings for words like Methodology, Supervision and Writing.  

A: We are sorry for the mistakes and thank you for your corrections. The line break in the middle of the word has been deleted (page 15, line 474-475).

 

We’d like to thank you and the reviewers for all your great effort, hard work, and support! We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your comments and constructive suggestion. Please feel free to inform us you have any questions.

 

Kind regards,

Zhihui Chang; Xunzhong Zhang

Corresponding author: Zhihui Chang; Xunzhong Zhang

E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

Address: School of Grassland Science, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China; School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg 24061, USA

Telephone: +86-10-62336284

Fax: +86-10-62322089

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 - In the statistical analysis part, I suggest putting how the experiment was designed, how many repetitions per treatment?

 - I suggest discreetly including the photos of the plants (results section, Turf quality)

Author Response

August 10, 2022

Dear Editor Ms. Evelyn Zhang:

Thank you for your letter of August 9, 2022 and the reviewers’ comments regarding  our manuscript entitled “Exogenous salicylic acid affects photosynthesis, antioxidant metabolism and gene expression in perennial ryegrass subjected to salt stress” (ID: agronomy- 1853320). Thank you and reviewers for the great effort and excellent reviewing. We have carefully revised the manuscript following your directions and Reviewers’ comments/suggestions. Please find our responses to Reviewers as follows:

Responses to Reviewer #2:

Dear reviewer, thank you for your excellent reviewing and hard work! We have revised it following your great comments.  

Line 25: In the statistical analysis part, I suggest putting how the experiment was designed, how many repetitions per treatment?

A: A split plot design with NaCl treatment as the main plot and SA treatments as subplots were used with four replications. The specific experimental treatment has been described in 2.2 (Line113). Therefore, more detailed description was made in the statistical analysis part (page 6, line 242-243).

Line 279: I suggest discreetly including the photos of the plants (results section, Turf quality)

A: Thank you for your great suggestion. We wish to add photos to show the treatment effects. However, after reviewing the photos, we found the quality was poor and not suitable for the publication. We apologize for it, and will make sure to take high quality photos in our future research projects. Thank you.

We’d like to thank you and the reviewers for all your great effort, hard work, and support! We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your comments and constructive suggestion. Please feel free to inform us you have any questions.

Kind regards,

Zhihui Chang; Xunzhong Zhang

Corresponding author: Zhihui Chang; Xunzhong Zhang

E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

Address: School of Grassland Science, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China; School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg 24061, USA

Telephone: +86-10-62336284

Fax: +86-10-62322089

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx