Action of Different Exposures of Chilled Atmospheric Treatments on the Mortality of Granary Weevil and Embryo Viability of the Treated Wheat

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

What was the temperature of the grain at the beginning of cooling?

What does “e” mean after the bracket                   row 171

(crop temperature in pest zone: 10.5°C)   Minus is missing before 10.5°C.                              row 178

…cooling of the samples above -20°C or…Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to say lower than above    row 193

Author Response

Dear Reviewer and Editor

it gives us pleasure to resubmit our manuscript Agronomy MDPI, entitled “Action of different exposures of chilled atmospheric treatments on the mortality of granary weevil and embryo viability of the treated wheat”. We appreciate the reviewer’s affirmation of this study and suggestions on the structure and organization of the writing in the previous manuscript.

We have fully revised the manuscript according to the comments of Reviewers.

We hope this new version will meet the requirement of reviewers as well as the publication quality of Agronomy MDPI.

Sincerely yours,S Keszthelyi

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The submitted paper deals with a very interesting topic, in terms of new methodological approaches for the control of stored food pests.

The MS is well written, with appropriate materials and methods, as well as the conducted data analysis.

Although some of the achieved conclusions seem to be not really new (e.g. the highest efficacy in controlling the granary weevil has been detected at an atmospheric setting of -25°C) some others, are quite important to be taken into account (e.g. the germination capacity of treated wheat batches was not reduced due to the embryo intactness). 

As only weak point that from an applied point of view is really important, is the lacking of a general discussion about the costs to implement this technique (comprising those related to electrical power consumption) can make the MS more significant. Please add some sentences about that.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer and Editor

it gives us pleasure to resubmit our manuscript Agronomy MDPI, entitled “Action of different exposures of chilled atmospheric treatments on the mortality of granary weevil and embryo viability of the treated wheat”. We appreciate the reviewer’s affirmation of this study and suggestions on the structure and organization of the writing in the previous manuscript.

We have fully revised the manuscript according to the comments of Reviewers.

We hope this new version will meet the requirement of reviewers as well as the publication quality of Agronomy MDPI.

Sincerely yours, S.Keszthelyi

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript "Action of different exposures of chilled atmospheric treatments on the mortality of granary weevil and embryo viability of the treated wheat" by Keszhelyi et al. aims to analyse the effect of different levels of cold treatments on the granary weevil Sitophilus granarius under laboratory conditions as well as on the treated wheat viability. 

Considering the growing request by consumers of chemical insecticide reduction, the subject of the manuscript is interesting for pest management of grain warehouses. The structure of the manuscript is quite clear and well organized. Anyhow, some clarifications and more considerations are needed before the manuscript could be publishable in Agronomy. For instance, the laboratory trials were done using grain samples of only 100  g. In warehouse conditions, the mass of the cereals are of course much more greater. So, the buffering effect of the mass of cereals should be much higher in warehouse conditions. For this reason, it will be required to significantly prolong the exposure time to low temperature in order to obtain the death of the insects. This should be discussed in the discussion paragraph. Although grain processing in warehouses by means of very low temperatures is a very attractive zero-residue technique, this technique is energy-intensive. It would be worth the pen to make some considerations about the possible costs in a real-warehouse situation, also in light of the energy price hikes of this period. Is it finally sustainable? Maybe yes, but with some caveats. Maybe the use of photovoltaic panels? or what else?

Then I have some minor specific comments:

Page 1 lines 14 and 34: the L. of Sitophilus granaries should be into brackets (L.) or (L., 1758). Brackets are not an optional. Parentheses around the author’s name and date of description show that the species was originally described under a different name, so synonyms exist. If there are no parentheses, the species has only had one scientific name and the author correctly placed it in the right genus when first described. Sitophilus granarius was originally described by Linnaeus as Calandra granaria, but later, someone later changed the generic assignment. So Linnaeus or L. should be written into brackets: Sitophilus granarius (L.) or Sitophilus granarius (L., 1758)

Page 1, line 29: “crop protection”. You cannot say, that the atmospheric cooling can be an effective solution for sustainable crop protection! The crops are cultivated plants that are grown on a large scale commercially, in the field. Better change in  …can be an effective solution for stored product protection

Page 1, line 47: plant protection aspects?? You are speaking about stored products!

Page 3 line 109 and all over the manuscript: do not use “crop”. The crop is in the field. You can use “grains” or “cereals”

Figure 1: what are the dotted lines? It is not clear.

Page 4, line 171: e recorded, what is e?

Page 6, line 208: (mean number of adults ± SE) and percentage (%±SE)???? Only one value occur, so which one of the two? The mean or the percentage?

Page 6, line 217 and 221: What is TTC? Please, write it in full

Page 7, line 239: “Grain held at 20°C will stop the development of most stored-product insects” are you sure??? I am not aware of this…..At 20°C most of the stored-product insects can start to slow down their development a little bit, not to stop it, unfortunately..

Page 7, line 246: “environmentally friendly”: Are you sure? It will require a lot of energy. Look at my general comments.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer and Editor

it gives us pleasure to resubmit our manuscript Agronomy MDPI, entitled “Action of different exposures of chilled atmospheric treatments on the mortality of granary weevil and embryo viability of the treated wheat”. We appreciate the reviewer’s affirmation of this study and suggestions on the structure and organization of the writing in the previous manuscript.

We have fully revised the manuscript according to the comments of Reviewers.

We hope this new version will meet the requirement of reviewers as well as the publication quality of Agronomy MDPI.

Sincerely yours,S. Keszthelyi

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This paper is premature considering the scope of study where the authors should have consulted with an ag. engineer regarding dielectric (buffering) properties of grains before initiating the study. In their discussion they mentioned that there is a buffering effect of the temperature and in figure 1 they clearly show that the wheat commodity they exposed for 75 mins at the two different humidity did not attain the calculated temperature. Considering the dielectric properties of grain the authors should have figured out how much time was required to bring grain temperature to the intended temperatures. That should have been the first focus of the study rather than blindly exposing the samples assuming that the wheat temperatures would be similar to the selected temperatures. A consultation with an Ag. engineer would have helped them to know about the dielectric property of the grain which is crucial to understand the buffering effect.

There were too many grammatical errors in the manuscript to be corrected, for the manuscript which is not publishable.

There are two sections 2.1 that are very confusing.

Section 2.1. They mentioned that they allowed insect, granary weevils to be on grains for two days and looking for egg laying, but when it came to exposure of insects to freezing temperatures, supposed to be section 2.2, it is unclear whether they exposed eggs or adults. In section 2.2. they counted the number of dead adults, so it is unclear whether the egg or the adult stage was exposed to the freezing temperatures. This is very confusing and not clear.

Section 2.3. The viability of the wheat kernels should have been easily tested by a simple germination test. Why is the viability of wheat kernels exposed to the freezing temperature tested by TTC  ?

Section 2.4. The statistical analysis proposed and performed are totally flawed.  

Table 2. Has some P values with no explanation. Same with Table 3 and 4. The results of the statistical analysis have not been discussed with F values, numerator, denominator with P values for one way or Two way analysis.

In the discussion section the author acknowledge that the experiment results do not apply to larger bulk grains. So given their immature attempt to not understand the dielectric property of grains, makes this unsuitable for publication, because their attempt to attain the freezing temperature without giving time for grains to equilibrate before taking the exposure time into account.

There was some extrapolation of data which is unacceptable. There are too many issues in the paper in relation to usage of crop instead of grain.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer
it gives us pleasure to resubmit our manuscript Agronomy MDPI, entitled “Action of different  exposures of chilled atmospheric treatments on the mortality of granary weevil and embryo viability of the treated wheat”. We appreciate the reviewer’s affirmation of this study and suggestions on the 
previous manuscript. 
We have accepted and revised the MS based on the suggestions, and we have uploaded the new version. Our reactions to the remarks of Rev 4, are the followings:
1. A consultation with an Ag. engineer would have helped them to know about the dielectric property of the grain which is crucial to understand the buffering effect.
➢ Thank you for your valuable suggestions. The next similar researches will be based on this criterium. Please understand that we are no longer able to do this in the currentstate of the manuscript
2. There are many grammatical errors in the manuscript.
➢ The grammatical errors were corrected. Please see the attached files
3. Section 2.1. They mentioned that they allowed insect, granary weevils to be on grains for two days and looking for egg laying, but when it came to exposure of insects to freezing Temperatures, supposed to be section 2.2, it is unclear whether they exposed eggs or adults.
4. In section 2.2. they counted the number of dead adults, so it is unclear whether the egg or the adult stage was exposed to the freezing temperatures. 
➢ In addition to the analyzed and counted adults, the exposure to frost also affected the eggs laid in parallel. After removing the adults, we therefore looked at the number of adults hatched from the eggs after one generation cycle. From this appeared adult number, we were able to conclude the number of eggs laid
5. Why is the viability of wheat kernels exposed to the freezing temperature tested by TTC?
➢ The effect of frost can potentially damage the embryos of the treated wheat grains, so the germination capacity of the seed can decrease. This is especially important for stored seed items.
6. Section 2.4. The statistical analysis proposed and performed are totally flawed. 
7. Table 2. Has some P values with no explanation. Same with Table 3 and 4. The results of the statistical analysis have not been discussed with F values, numerator, denominator with P values for one way or Two way analysis.
➢ In the case of Table 2, we replaced the F-value data. The statistical method was mentioned in the context. When evaluating the statistical results, we used the signficance level. We did the same for Figure 4. In the case of Figure 3, however, we were interested in the statistically verifiable difference between two data sets. So here we did a t-test where there is no F value.
8. here are too many issues in the paper in relation to usage of crop instead of grain.
➢ In accordance with the opinion of the previous reviewer, we changed the term crop everywhere to grain or cereal
We hope this new version will meet the publication quality of Agronomy MDPI.
Sincerely yours,
S. Keszthelyi

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors, I appreciate your efforts in meeting the reviewers' requests. Anyhow this suggestion has not been taken into considerations.

Page 3 line 109 and all over the manuscript: do not use “crop”. The crop is in the field. You can use “grains” or “cereals”. Also in the new added text the word "crop" is used.

I still believe it is better to change the word "crop". 

Concerning the caption of Fig. 1, thank you for the explanation of the "e", but maybe it would be better to reword the sentence, otherwise it will not be clear to most of the readers.

Moreover, I think it is worthwhile to resume again the meaning of TTC in full in the caption of fig 3 for easier understanding by the reader.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

it gives us pleasure to resubmit our manuscript Agronomy MDPI, entitled “Action of different exposures of chilled atmospheric treatments on the mortality of granary weevil and embryo viability of the treated wheat”. We appreciate the reviewer’s affirmation of this study and suggestions on the previous manuscript.  

 We have accepted and revised the MS based on the suggestions, and we have uploaded the new version

The word “crop” is changed in the whole MS

The explanation of “e” is added to MS as “Euler-type value”.

The entire name of TTC is added to caption of Fig 3.

We hope this new version will meet the publication quality of Agronomy MDPI.

Sincerely yours, S. Keszthelyi

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors did not address all of the original review concerns. Provide one-way and two-way stats (F value; numerator df and denominator df; and P value), plus for two-way need interaction stats as well. Table 2 needs df for the F values. Fig. 2 is based on extrapolation and unnecessary as Fig. 1 showed that mortality was not 100%. The authors did not indicate quantity of grain used in exposures as this has an impact on temperatures attained. There is no control treatment (grain placed at rearing conditions to see how many adults would emerge). What stage of the insect did the authors expose (eggs?). This technology has no way to scale up commercially as grain is a poor conductor temperatures. The authors set chilled temperatures were not attained, and will not be attained with larger volumes of grain. Plus authors should have given adequate time for grain to reach equilibrium with set chilled temperature. This paper is of academic interest and has no practical value. Again common and scientific names and author names for rice and maize weevils have not been provided. maize weevil is Sitophilus zeamais not zemays!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

thank you very much for your thorough comments that support the quality of our work.

Our reaction to your comments can be found in attached file.

We hope that the corrected version of the article and our responses meet the quality standards expected by Agronomy.

Best regards

S. Keszthelyi

Author Response File: Author Response.docx