Optimizing Row Spacing Increases Stalk Lodging Resistance by Improving Light Distribution in Dense Maize Populations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

The manuscript "Optimizing Row Spacing Increases Stalk Lodging Resistance by Improving Light Distribution in Dense Maize Populations" (agronomy-2137279) has been submitted for publication in the Agronomy journal. This study aimed to examine the effect of row spacing on stalk lodging in maize by considering various physiological factors such as light transmittance and internode characteristics. While the manuscript presents significant findings, it requires massive improvements in its overall structure and language quality to meet the standards of the Agronomy journal.

Upon reviewing the abstract, there are several issues with grammar, articles, punctuation, and other language usages that detract from the overall quality of the manuscript. For example:

1.     In line 16, using a comma after the word "conducted" is unnecessary.

2.     In the same line, the adverb "jointly" does not fit well with the noun "effects" and could be replaced with the adjective "joint" to create a proper sentence.

3.     In line 17, the noun phrase "light condition" is missing a determiner, such as "a" or "the".

4.     In line 28, two independent clauses are improperly joined using inappropriate punctuation.

5.     In line 32, the word "lower" is missing an article.

Overall, it is important to carefully proofread and edit the manuscript to ensure that it is free of language errors and follows proper grammar and usage conventions. This will improve the clarity and readability of the manuscript and increase the chances of it being accepted for publication.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Dear authors,

The paper "Optimizing Row Spacing Increases Stalk Lodging Resistance by Improving Light Distribution in Dense Maize Populations " by Rong Jin, Zhong Li, Xinglong Wang, Fan Liu, Fanlei Kong, Qinlin Liu, Tianqiong Lan, Dongju Feng, Jichao Yuan, evaluate the effects of row spacing and planting density on the maize stem characteristics and the quantitative relationship of light condition within a maize population with maize stalk lodging resistance in Zhongjiang County Sichuan Province, Southwest China.

Finally, the work can be published. 

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Lodging is a very important question in maize production. It limited the increase in plant density. Cultivation measures to improve lodging resistance is an important way. This manuscript determined the physiological ecological mechanisms of row spacing affecting stalk lodging resistance and its interaction with planting density. The manuscript is excellent.

1.    Compared with previous studies (Qi et al., 2021, Agron. J.), what is the innovation of this manuscript? The author needs to add this information in introduction or discussion.

2.    Abstract section, Line 27 “with the increase of row spacing” Do increase average spacing, narrow spacing, width spacing? Please add more information.

3.    Experimental design section, why is the planting density different between the two years? Please add an explanation in the article experimental design section.

4.    In the conclusion section, the author needs to define the row space configuration by combining the yield and stalk lodging resistance.

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report (New Reviewer)

The final decision for this paper is to publish as it is. I have no ethical concerns regarding experiments, conflict of interest, plagiarism, or publication ethics. I enjoyed reading this paper very much, and my congratulations to the authors.

Author Response

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This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Maize is the main food crop in the world, and it is also an important feed and industrial raw material. Maize is the largest grain crop in China. Improving the yield of maize is of great significance to food security and economic development. Planting density and light energy utilization efficiency are important factors affecting maize yield. The effects of planting density and row spacing on lodging resistance and other agronomic characters of maize were studied. The lodging resistance and yield of maize could be affected by optimizing the row spacing. The quality of the whole manuscript needs to be improved. For example, in Section 2.4 statistical methods, one-way ANOVA is wrong. It is strange that such a sentence appears in the result part. 3.1 “This section may be divided by subheadings. It should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation, as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn”. In Table 5, 2.35 ± 0.16bd, multiple comparison is definitely wrong. What is important is that the research is not innovative enough to be published in this journal.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

This study investigated the impacts of planting density and row spacing on stalk lodging resistance by altering the canopy light distribution. The topic is interesting and has well significance in maize production, especially where radiation is less. My major concern is that the physiological understanding of row spacing and light distribution impacts on lodging resistance should be added and discussed in the DISCUSSION section, beyond the general correlation analysis. Other minor comments are listed below.

Abstract

-          L24, what does “proper row spacing” refer to? Proper for what? Put it into a context.

 MM

-          L88, please clearly show the soil type and texture, and according to which soil taxonomy.

-          Line 164-166, two-factor split-plot design was imposed to the experiment. Why did the author perform one-way ANOVA? Why not a two-way ANOVA or mixed ANOVA? The fixed and random effects should be also indicated in this subsection.

-          Line169-174, “As the internode morphology and mechanical strength index performance at the filling and silking stages were similar, only the data at the silking stage were listed.” I strongly suggest to add this result as supporting data. As well as the individual internode data. In addition, it’s better to present the statistical results in the supporting information to show the significance between stages or between internode position.

 Results

-          L179-181, remove the first sentence.

-          Table 1, what about the data in 2017?

-          Line 289-296, where is the CV data showing?

-          Fig. 2, why did the author focus more on the increases by row spacing B4 vs. B3 at A3 density? What about the B2 vs. B1 at A3, where the stalk strength decreased? Please add more information in the RESULTS and DISCUSSION.

-          Table 5, footnotes for the statistics are very confused. How is the multiple comparison conducted? across all treatments or between density?

 Discussion

-          Line 475-479, need some supporting citations

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

You have done a good job on writing this manuscript. The experimental design was good and the article was well organized and clear. I have noticed that you have made enough studies, measurements and analyses. Also your results were statistically ensured and were similar to other researches.  I only have few suggestions to add some missing information:

- I didn't find tables S5 and S6 (line 383)

- also, there are no Figures S1A, S1B, S1C and S1D in the article (lines 432-434).

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The revised version was better than the orginal version. I still think that the novelty of this research is low. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks so much for the authors' edits and revision. Currently, the manasript has been improved a lot. However, I still have some minor comments to the authors.

1. In the subsection 2.4, for the statement that "all factors were considered as fixed effects", what does all factors included? planting density, row sapcing, and their interactions? what are the random effects? the blocks?

2. I am still confused by the descriptions of statistics in the table footer of Tables 2, 3, 4, and 5, etc, as well as in the figure captions. Were the means compared between row spacing at each planting density within each year? or compared across row spacing and density within each year? In addition, what about the "mean values"  in Tables? e.g. the means of yield "7209.0b, 8332.5b, and 7184.7b"in  Table 5, were they compared between planting density within each year? or across two years? if the former is correct, why were the means followed by three "b" letters?

Author Response

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