Efficiency of Fungicide Application an Using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and Pneumatic Sprayer for Control of Hemileia vastatrix and Cercospora coffeicola in Mountain Coffee Crops
, Maria Eduarda Audizio Ribeiro 1,2, Pengchao Chen 5, Yubin Lan 5, Shizhou Wang 5, Hugo Marcus Fialho e Moraes 6 and Marconi Ribeiro Furtado Júnior 6Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Pesticides are still intensively used in agriculture to protect crops and ensure the quality of products, therefore the search for new methods of spray application is necessary. Although UAV are one of the promising techniques, the scale of their application is still small and in many countries (e.g. in Europe) their use is prohibited. I am deeply convinced that the research carried out will encourage the wider use of UAVs in agricultural practice, especially for performing treatments in hard-to-reach areas. It is worth emphasizing the comprehensive assessment of the spraying technique (spray coverage, droplet density, spray deposit) and its reference to the currently used tractor pneumatic sprayers as well as the final verification of the obtained results in biological efficacy tests. Overall, the article is written correctly, but requires some minor corrections before it is published.
Title. The suggested paper title: “Spray application with the use of UAV in mountain coffee crops”.
The reader of the article would like to receive an explanation on the following questions:
1) why UAV achieved similar biological effectiveness against leaf rust and cercosporiosis as the pneumatic sprayer, although they achieved much lower deposition (table 6; DP, spray dose – 15 l/ha). Does this mean that the dose of the pesticide was overestimated, or there was a mistake e.g. in calculation of the fluorescent dye concentration?
2) What was the speed of the air stream in the crown of the coffee bushes measured under the UAV (Table 1) ?
The paper can be published after corrections as below.
1. Figures and tables should be self-explanatory without the need to use the text of the article.
- Figure 3 is illegible and incomprehensible.
- Figure 7. What is the meaning of “median”?
2. There is no drawing showing the arrangement of water sensitive papers (artificial target)
3. I suggest using a different abbreviation for spray coverage. The abbreviation CV% is reserved for coefficient of variation.
4. Data on the place of production (town, country) should be completed for: UAV, DropletScope® system, fluorescent dye, fluorimeter, meteo station, chlorophyll meter,
5. Table 2 should be supplemented with the following basic information: nozzle type, liquid pressure, spray dose, flight speed
6. Repetition (treatment) is not defined precisely enough (line 169)
7. Description of the Y axis is missing (line 389)
8. The abbreviation AACPD appears in Figure 10, and AUDPC in the figure description are different (line 418)
Minor faults
- Line 146, 152, 167; Is “… storage tank…”, Should be “… spray tank …”
- Line 153; Is “… simple fan spray tips (XR110-01VS) …”, Should be “… flat fan spray nozzle (XR110-01VS …”
- Table 1. Is “… Spray tip type – Fan…”, Should be “… Spray nozzle type – flat fan …”
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The article about crop protection is popular in the field of agriculture, especially the innovation of method evaluation on pesticides effective application. The reviewer suggests that the author should check your paper for some unnecessary mistakes after finishing, attitude is very important. The article needs to be promoted, specifically as follows:
1. Pay more attention to the standard format of your units, such as L ha-1, µL cm-2, L min-1…in the paper.
2. There are too many paragraphs in Introduction, limited to 3 or 4 is best.
3. Not only is the introduction, but all parts of the paper have more paragraphs. It is suggested that the author integrate relevant paragraphs into a large paragraph.
4. Pay more attention to the standard format of your references, to meet the journal requirements. Delete the part of references example.
5. Pay more attention to the standard format of your citation, such as {5}, [2]3…in the paper.
6. Discussions should be conducted in conjunction with the resulting content, not as a separate section. Moreover, the results and discussion should be deepen (detailed written) because the main idea of this paper is control test.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This manuscript deals with the efficiency of spray droplet deposition in coffee crops grown in a mountain region, and the efficacy of control of fungal diseases. The paper is current. Reviewer thinks that the paper is well organized in terms of materials and methods, experiment, and result analysis. However, the author should provide additional explanation for the following:
1. The introduction is complicated and needs to be sorted out clearly.
2. The resolution of some schematic diagrams such as Figure 3, Figure 4, and Figure 5 is not enough. It is recommended to improve the resolution to make it clearer than before.
3. The units of all physical quantities in the manuscript are incorrect. For example, “L min-1” in line 154 should be “L·min-1”. The superscript or subscript formats of some physical quantity units are incorrect.
4. Some literatures of “References” section have no websites and pages, please add.
5. The literature format of in “References” section is not uniform, and careful modifications are needed.
6. Formulas in the manuscript need to be numbered.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
None.
