Estimation of Drought Tolerance Indices in Upland Cotton under Water Deficit Conditions
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Topic. The selection of topic for research is good and of practical importance.
Abstract. It needs lot of improvement. The language used is very poor and must be improved. Sentence structure is not up to the mark of the standard 0f journal. The results in the abstract are not clearly elaborated. Over all Abstract is very weak.
Introduction.
This section is again very low in writing. Literature presented is very old and this can be replaced with the recent one. As cotton is very important crop in the world and research is running continuously. Secondly the relevant literature must be presented and irrelevant must be replaced.
Materials and Methods.
This section needs some clarifications.
1. What is the criteria for the selection of genotypes?
2. Are these genotypes cultivated in arid areas?
3. Why only two levels of drought being applied?
4. Why is only biplot method used for expression of results?
5. Some methods used in the study have no references?
Results Section.
This section needs improvement both in the language and expression. The presentation of results is poor. Why all the parameters have not been separately presented? Results have not been clearly presented.
Discussion.
This section also needs improvement in language and literature presented should be relevant. The comparison of the results with older results is missing. More literature must be presented.
References.
some are very old and must be replaced with recent ones
Author Response
The reply is mention in attached file
Reviewer 2 Report
The literature review is weak. The authors need to do a more in-depth literature review of past studies to make the introduction more meaningful.
There are several grammatical errors in all sections of the manuscript.
The ideas or thoughts presented in the introduction section should be separated into separate paragraphs. In its current form, it is difficult to appreciate the information provided by the authors. The whole introduction is written as only one paragraph.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
The reply is mention in attached file
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Introduction has enough information about, Estimation of Drought Tolerance Indices in Upland Cotton under Water Deficit Conditions and Methodology for the present study is well articulated. The author has written the results with novel information, contribute to the advancement of understanding and are pragmatic. Discussion of the manuscript is well written. In overall manuscript I will suggest that please include
1. Specific, detailed comments regarding the originality, scientific quality.
2. Check the needs for tables and figures and the adequacy of the references.
3. Check the spellings.
The present work is novel and well written.
Author Response
The reply is mention in attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
The manuscript entitled “Estimation of Drought Tolerance Indices in Upland Cotton under Water Deficit Conditions”, describes a study that the response of cotton germplasm at seedling stage under water deficit conditions, the drought tolerant and susceptible genotypes were selected based on biplot analysis. I believe that the introduction is written with less logic, and not pointing out the particular concern in this study. I can't follow the main obstacles in this topic and the problems that the authors will focus on. More importantly, there also I can't find a hypothesis in the introduction, which the authors tried to answer in this study. Besides these, there are lots of technical issues such as the numbers of references were wrong, the writing font and style is not the same, and the statistical analysis is not clearly written. Finally, the authors need to consult with an English grammar expert. The paper is very difficult to read in its current form. I suggest the first/corresponding authors should check carefully, and send it to all co-authors to read before submitting. Therefore, I reject the manuscript in its current form.
Author Response
The reply is mention in attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 5 Report
The manuscript needs to be rewritten as it is difficult to understand in its present form, especially the results, discussion, and conclusion sections.
Author Response
The reply is mention in attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 6 Report
The current article investigated the drought tolerance indices for 50 cotton genotypes grown under water deficiency. Drought tolerance has started to be an extreme stress condition for agricultural plants due to global warming and climate change. Therefore, the development and selection of agricultural plants resistant to water deficiency are highly important. The study has important outcomes in terms of cotton breeding and the development of drought indices for this species. Thus, it deserves to be published in the journal after making these improvements in the article;
1. Many articles investigate the cotton-drought relationship in the literature. The results of these articles should be given in the introduction part and the novelty of the article should be represented by referring to these studies. Some of these articles were given below
- Screenıng of cotton cultıvars for drought tolerance under fıeld conditions. DOI: 10.17557/tjfc.57032
- Breeding Potential of upland cotton for Water Stress tolerance. DOI: 10.21162/PAKJAS/17.6324
- Evaluatıon of cotton mutants for water defıcıt condıtıon. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54112/bcsrj.v2022i1.107
2. Experimental procedures should be explained in detail. For instance;
-how did you create drought stress for the cotton genotypes? You are mentioning about the pot capacity but you did not explanied how did you measure it and how did you create %50 and %70 pot capacity.
There is also some confusion about the analysis of the data. For instance, how did you interpret the increase in proline content; it might indicate both drought tolerance or susceptibility. As you may know, resistant plants may not need to increase proline content due to exsistance of other stress tolerance mechanisms. The same confusion also existed for the enzyme activity results. Therefore, the yield of the plants should be taken into consideration for drought tolerance, and biochemical results should be used to understand the level of drought stress in the plants. Utilization of antioxidant enzyme activities and proline content in indices might not give the correct results. I recommend reading and citing these articles in the text;
- Changes in Morphological, Physiological Traits and Enzyme Activity of Grafted and Ungrafted Grapevine Rootstocks Under Drought Stress. DOI 10.1007/s10341-017-0345-7
- Statistical analysis should be explained in detail and the explanation about the grouping of the data should be expanded.
3. The results section should be completely revised.
- The figures are so complicated that is not possible to understand the results.
- Only tables were given but a detailed explanation of the tables and figures was not given.
- Although there is a large variation in all measured characters, the relationship between these variations and drought response was not explained in the result or discussion part.
Author Response
The reply is mention in attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The referencing style still has to be consistent. whereas the numbering style has been adopted throughout the manuscript, one reference still appeared int the introduction as Pace et al. (1999). it needs to be corrected.
in the introduction section, the '2' in H202 should be subscript. ie; H202
Author Response
I have made a lot of improvements in the abstract, updated review literature has been added in introduction part, the importance of cotton has been explained, the grammar has also been corrected and the result has also been elaborated well. I have improved the discussion part and also correlate the results with previous studies.
Materials and Methods.
- What is the criteria for the selection of genotypes?
Ans: We randomly selected whether this genotype could tolerate severe dehydration or not.
- Are these genotypes cultivated in arid areas?
Ans:. The genotypes that was used in this study were cultivated in the semi-arid areas of Pakistan.
- Why only two levels of drought being applied?
Ans: According to the current situation, Pakistan’s land is very dry and cannot tolerate more water shortage from less than 50%. So I have elected a moderate 75% FC and high level 50%FC.
- Why is only biplot method used for expression of results?
Ans: Because ultra-imposition of studied variables is exhibited by the bi-plot of principal component analysis as vector described the direction and extent of variability in each variable .The genotypes which are close to the origin depicted the more similarity with one another but those scale away from the origin representing maximum variation and less similarity.
- Some methods used in the study have no references?
Ans: I have now put all the references
Reviewer 4 Report
Agree to this current form
Author Response
Thanks to esteems reviewer for agreeing with my editing
Reviewer 5 Report
Due to ongoing global climate change and the associated issue of drought, the authors attempted to evaluate the drought resistance capabilities of 50 different cotton genotypes at 50% and 75% drought stress conditions by measuring diverse physiological and biochemical parameters.
Using the K-means clustering technique and biplot analysis, they identified 4 genotypes (gIR-3701, FH-142, CIM-595, and CYTO-515) that are drought tolerant and could be recommended to cotton farmers.
The following corrections are recommended for the authors:
-"FC" is not defined in "50% FC and 75% FC."
-Give the meaning of MAF at first-time usage.
-Give the full meaning of ROS at first-time usage.
-"H2O2", change the "2" to lower script form.
-"CMS" meaning should be given.
-"H2SO4", change the "2" and "4" to lower script form.
-Centrifugation speed unit was given interchangeably as "g" and "rpm", preferably, stick to "g" as the standard unit.
-change "supernatant has moved to the eppendorf tube" to "supernatant was transferred to the eppendorf tube".
-"0, T1, T2" not defined in Figures 7 to 21.
-check this statement and rephrase "if a genotype shows reduced growth and yield loss, it is said to be more tolerant to stress, thus various parameters were studied". Genotypes with reduced growth and yield loss should be an indication of being less tolerant to stress.
-Rephrase "but have more excised leaf water loss under the drought susceptible conditions [42,43].separated the sensitive and tolerant cotton varieties based on relative cell damage and cellular membrane leakage".
Author Response
The FC formula was multiplied by 100 in the control conditions while in the 50% (FC) water stress treatment the FC formula was multiplied with 50 and in last but not the least the formula of FC was multiplied with 75 in 75% (FC) water stress treatment.
Responses:
- I have added in the introduction part of manuscript MAF Stand for million acre feet.
- I have also added ROS stand for reactive oxygen species.
- I have changed the "2" into lower script form in the formula of H20
- I have also written that CMS stands for cell membrane stability.
- I have changed the "2" and "4" to lower script form in the formula of H2SO4".
- In methodology wherever ‘’rpm’’ is present I have written it ‘’g” as a standard unit.
- I have also changed this sentence "supernatant has moved to the eppendorf tube" to "supernatant was transferred to the eppendorf tube".
- Now, I have also defined the 0, T1, T2" in Figures 7 to 21.
- I have also checked and rephrase this statement "if a genotype shows reduced growth and yield loss, it is said to be more tolerant to stress, thus various parameters were studied". Genotypes with reduced growth and yield loss should be an indication of being less tolerant to stress.
- I have also rephrased these lines, “utilized the cell membrane leakage and relative cell damage to distinguish between the drought susceptible and tolerant genotypes’’
Reviewer 6 Report
the article had extensive editing and development in its revised version. It is now ready to be published in the journal. Although the authors made statistical analysis, error bars in the graphs (fig7-21) still missing.
Author Response
I would like to thanks for taking the necessary time and effort to review the manuscript. I sincerely appreciate all your valuable comments and suggestions, which helped me in improving the quality of the manuscript. I have made the extensive editing improvements in the whole manuscript. Now, I have added the error bars in the graphs (fig7-21)
