Resistance Breeding to Northern Corn Leaf Blight with Dominant Genes, Polygene, and Their Combinations—Effects to Yield Traits
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General remarks
A lot of tables (Tables 2, 3 and 5, for example) should be converted into plots because they are huge and difficult to understand in this form.
There are a lot of abbreviations in article but there is no a list of abbreviations expansion.
Introduction
Line 50: add accession date for link
Lines 53-58 (and further in article): in-text formulas are not perceptible
Materials and methods
Lines 86-92: pedigrees are better to present as a table or a scheme
Material and methods chapter is poorly structured. I suggest to split it into sections to get a better perception.
Results
ANOVA results should be represented as a table with a MS, SS, df, F-statistics value and P value. Also effect size calculation could be a good idea.
Figure 1: add description for different linetypes (dashed, solid, etc.) into caption
In general, article require a major revision in order to get a better structure and more clean representation of the results.
Author Response
A lot of tables (Tables 2, 3 and 5, for example) should be converted into plots because they are huge and difficult to understand in this form.
Response: We tried with plots first, but because too many genotypes and gene combinations, is very difficult to mark significances on plot.
Table 2, 3, and 5 are large and complicate, but there are subtitles for each grouped method.
There are a lot of abbreviations in article but there is no a list of abbreviations expansion.
Response: MDPI’s agronomy-template does not have abbreviations section.
Introduction
Line 50: add accession date for link
Response: Line 50-51 has the internet connection, go to its “northern corn leaf blight”, will find results.
Lines 53-58 (and further in article): in-text formulas are not perceptible
Response: I know it is not usual. But I hope to remind younger readers / other researchers can understand, in a study, if your yields are not under the same standard moisture, all conclusions may not right. It is a common mistake for published articles that their yield were not under the same moisture.
Materials and methods
Lines 86-92: pedigrees are better to present as a table or a scheme
Response: Resistance Breeding to Northern Corn Leaf Blight with Dominant Genes, Polygene, and Their Combinations was written to two articles, - Effects to Disease Traits and - Effects to Yield Traits. More details of pedigree and scheme can be seen in the article “- Effects to Disease Traits”.
Material and methods chapter is poorly structured. I suggest to split it into sections to get a better perception.
Response: Good idea. Added: 2.1. Materials and Experiment methods; 2.2. Statistic methods for gene effects comparison; and 2.3. Statistic methods for prediction losses and gene effects to yield traits.
Results
ANOVA results should be represented as a table with a MS, SS, df, F-statistics value and P value. Also effect size calculation could be a good idea.
Response: Two reasons for not list ANOVA tables. 1. This article is very long already. ANOVAs are not so important as other results. 2. Most “Source” of ANOVA table were highly significant (P < 0.01), only few were not significant, can be expressed by words.
Figure 1: add description for different linetypes (dashed, solid, etc.) into caption
Response: Good comment. Added “Solid line presents direct effect, dashed line presents indirect effect, and solid-dash dot line presents genetic effect of genotype.”
In general, article require a major revision in order to get a better structure and more clean representation of the results.
Response: Its “Discussion” and “Conclusion” parts were revised.
“Resistance Breeding to Northern Corn Leaf Blight with Dominant Genes, Polygene, and Their Combinations” is a breeding project. We are trying to use two papers “- Effects to Disease Traits” and “- Effects to Yield Traits” to tell other researchers how to do resistance breeding to NCLB, which dominant genes or Polygene-dominant gene combinations are better, and how to make successful resistant inbreds and hybrids. Our original data had 163 genotypes, 13 disease/pathogen traits, 11 plant/leaf traits, 17 Ear/yield traits, and 6 weather related data. In these two articles, only 4 disease traits, 4 yield traits, and two weather data were used. There were huge efforts made for this study, especially how to make correct comparisons among genes and their combinations, and how to predict yield losses and gene effects. These are new for similar studies. So far, I don’t have any idea how to make a better structure and better results. Hope you can tell me. Thanks.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The title of the manuscript is good, but the method of producing the manuscript is awful, so it is necessary to re-analyze the work clearly in order to make it easier to understand the manuscript.
The introduction deletes from it the equations and puts in the materials and methods.
- The results must be written based on the new analysis and explains the idea of the study
- The discussion in this way is the results and must be it explain the results.
Author Response
The title of the manuscript is good, but the method of producing the manuscript is awful, so it is necessary to re-analyze the work clearly in order to make it easier to understand the manuscript.
Response: “Resistance Breeding to Northern Corn Leaf Blight with Dominant Genes, Polygene, and Their Combinations” is a breeding project. We are trying to use two papers “- Effects to Disease Traits” and “- Effects to Yield Traits” to tell other researchers how to do resistance breeding to NCLB, which dominant genes or Polygene-dominant gene combinations are better, and how to make successful resistant inbreds and hybrids. Our original data had 163 genotypes, 13 disease/pathogen traits, 11 plant/leaf traits, 17 Ear/yield traits, and 6 weather related data. In these two articles, only 4 disease traits, 4 yield traits, and two weather data were used. There were huge efforts made for this study, especially how to make correct comparisons among genes and their combinations, and how to predict yield losses and gene effects. These are new for similar studies. So far, I don’t have any idea how to make a better structure and better results. Hope you can tell me. Thanks.
The introduction deletes from it the equations and puts in the materials and methods.
Response: The two formulas/equations were used to explain why Yield is a compound trait, should be in the introduction. I know it is not usual. But I hope to remind younger readers / other researchers can understand, in a study, if your yields are not under the same standard moisture, all conclusions may not right. It is a common mistake for published articles that their yield were not under the same moisture.
The results must be written based on the new analysis and explains the idea of the study
Response: “The objectives of this paper were: 1. To estimate effects of dominant genes (Ht(s)), polygene (PG), and their combinations to percent leaf area affected (PLAA), and Yield, kernel moisture, kernel number per ear (KNPE), and 100-kernel weight (100KW); 2.To estimate effects of resistant gene in female, male, or both to above five traits; 3.To predict losses and effect of resistant genes with PLAA to above four yield traits; and 4. To estimate effects of resistant genes to Yield under different NCLB epidemic conditions.”, our results: “3.3. Correlation coefficients among disease and yield traits of crosses from E1” explained why we select PLAA, Yield, Kernel moisture, KNPE, and 100KW for this study. “3.4. Effects of Ht1, Ht2, Ht3, Htm1, Htn1 and Partial resistance”; “3.5. Effects of PG, PGHt1, PGHt2, PGHt3, PGHtm1, and PGHtn1”; “3.6. Effects of gene combinations”; “3.7. Predict losses of yield traits with PLAA and effects of resistant genes to yield traits”; and “3.8. E2 results” explained the idea of this study.
The discussion in this way is the results and must be it explain the results.
Response: “Discussion” was re-organized, including some from “Results”. All discussions are parts of this breeding story. Inbred yield losses part and leaf trait part were not two-year data, so only used for discussion and hope other research can do similar work. Inoculation and favor conditions tell us importance of inoculation, irrigation, and enough rainfall to get reliable results. Its last part explained why only 6 lines from this study were released to public.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
This research studies the effects of different combinations of genes on the Northern Corn Leaf Blight and yield. It is very interesting research with solid data to demonstrate the main points. But there are several places below that need to be improved for publication.
Line 15 to 16: no definition of the acronyms used here, and need to define the names,
Ht3 ˜ Ht2 ˜ PGHtm1 ˜ PGHt1< PGHt3 ˜ PGHt2 < PGHtn1 < PG < Ht1 < Htn1 ˜ Htm1.
Line 18 to 19: what does "were done" mean here? This sentence needs to be rewritten.
Line 279: the Results and Discussions have both results and discussion, and then there is another discussion section in line 607. Rearrange these two sections according to the journal’s requirements: move the discussions from results to the discussion section.
Line 655: the Conclusion section repeats some of the results sections and needs to be rewritten to clarify the main conclusion into a couple of main points.
Author Response
This research studies the effects of different combinations of genes on the Northern Corn Leaf Blight and yield. It is very interesting research with solid data to demonstrate the main points. But there are several places below that need to be improved for publication.
Line 15 to 16: no definition of the acronyms used here, and need to define the names,
Ht3 ˜ Ht2 ˜ PGHtm1 ˜ PGHt1< PGHt3 ˜ PGHt2 < PGHtn1 < PG < Ht1 < Htn1 ˜ Htm1.
Response: Line 9 and Line 10 “To assess effects of dominant genes (Ht(s)), polygene (PG),” explained them, right?
Line 18 to 19: what does "were done" mean here? This sentence needs to be rewritten.
Response: Because only 200 words are allowed in the abstract, no space for any detail results.
Line 279: the Results and Discussions have both results and discussion, and then there is another discussion section in line 607. Rearrange these two sections according to the journal’s requirements: move the discussions from results to the discussion section.
Response: Did as you suggested. Discussion part is re-organized.
Line 655: the Conclusion section repeats some of the results sections and needs to be rewritten to clarify the main conclusion into a couple of main points.
Response: Did as you suggested. Conclusion part is rewritten.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
All my comments were taken into account
Author Response
Reviewer 1 did a excellent job, clear with details.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors did not submit a new manuscript improvement, so I see it unsuitable for publication
Author Response
Reviewer 2' comments without details, no way to follow it.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
