Watering Shapes a Robust and Stable Microbial Community under Fusarium Crown Rot Infection
, Chenghang Du, Yutian Gao, Xiaohan Zhou, Irsa Ejaz, Jieru Guo, Kunhu Chen, Jun Ma, Yinghua Zhang, Zhimin Wang and Zhencai Sun *
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Review of “Watering shapes a robust and stable microbial community and makes winter wheat resistant to crown rot”
Page 1, line 9: separate parenthetical thought with commas; Wheat crown rot, caused by Fusarium pseudograminearum, is…; delete “(Fp)”
Line 10: change “with scarce water.” to “where water is scarce.”
Line 11: change “among” to “between”
Line 13: change “well-watering” to “well-watered”
Line 14: change “are interacted” to “interact”; change “The” to “These”
Line 15: change “well-watering” to “well-watered”; add …decreased “the” disease…
Line 16: delete “rather than the fungal community”; replace “held” with more appropriate word
Line 18: clarify “connected at both two period.”
Line 19: clarify this sentence
Line 20: clarify this sentence
Line 21: clarify this sentence
Line 29: separate parenthetical thought with commas; Crop, from sowing to harvesting, are…
Line 30: change to …diseases, poor soil, and weather…
Line 31: add …of the “most” decisive…; delete “the”
Line 32: clarify this sentence
Line 33: clarify this sentence
Line 34: change “study” to “studies”
Line 35: clarify this sentence
Line 39: delete comma
Line 40: ital. “Ramularia”
Line 41: change “was” to “were”
Line 43: change “to” to “with”; clarify this sentence
This paper should be considered for publication after the English is corrected
This manuscript needs extensive correction of the English before it can be properly evaluated.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript by Xu et al investigates the link between water availability and microbial communities in crown rot infected wheat. The study is very interesting in that it explores, for what is possibly the first time, what might underlie the phenomenon of water deficit exacerbating Fusarium crown rot disease of wheat. The manuscript is well written and fills an open gap in the literature surrounding this disease. I have a couple of comments.
Use of the word resistant/resistance. In the title the phrase “makes winter wheat resistant to crown rot” is used. In the abstract the words “are interacted with disease resistance” I feel resistance should be reserved for true genetic or perhaps induced resistance. Here the experiments are only conducted with one genotype so resistance cannot be measured here in any comparative sense. A more appropriate title would be “Watering shapes a robust and stable microbial community under Fusarium crown rot infection.”
In the abstract and implied in the text is that the work is looking at the interaction between watering (or water availability) and expression of disease symptoms due to Fusarium infection. However, no samples are included in the work where the plants remain un-inoculated. At best under this experimental design claims can be made about the differences between watering regimes and microbial community structure when under Fusarium infection. In the absence of un-inoculated controls conclusions about the interaction between watering regimes and Fusarium crown rot and the microbial community cannot be drawn.
Also considering the work has been conducted under Fusarium infection, I was surprised that there wasn’t a specific mention of Fusaria in the OTUs. The levels of Fusarium in the different watering regimes may also differ (as a proportion of the total fungal load) so this would be interesting to the reader to have a brief mention of this specific taxa.
In section 3.2 a number of percentage comparisons are made. Increases in temperature in degrees Celsius can’t be compared in percentage terms as temperature is actually measured in degrees Kelvin – we just use Celsius for convenience. The same holds for pH comparisons as the pH scale is actually a logarithmic scale.
Figure legends: spell out abbreviations such as LEfSe
Data availability: Raw data must be submitted to a public repository such as the NCBI SRA.
By and large the text is well written. I have a couple of typos
Line 122 The plants inoculated with Fp all showed FCR symptoms but with different infection levels.
Line 205: was used
Line 306: regimes at both periods
Line 469: shown
Line 471: consistent
Line 482: When soil was faced with water…
Line 483: were inhibited
Line 534: A plenty. Remove the A before plenty
There are a few misused words but by and large it is pretty good.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper contains new and significant information and is ready for publication in the journal Agronomy.
The following corrections should be considered by the authors:
Page 1, line 42: add the scientific name and taxonomic authority for chickpeas
Page 2, line 45: delete “with”, replace “associations” with “relationships”
Line 52: add the scientific name and taxonomic authority for wheat here since it is the first mention of the plant
Line 58: give the taxonomic authority for C. etunicatu
Line 59: give the scientific name and taxonomic authority for ryegrass
Line 69: delete scientific name and taxonomic authority
Line 71: give the taxonomic authority for F. pseudograminearum
Line 92: capitalize “Petri”
Page 3, line 94: replace “isolated” with “sequestered”
Line 97: replace “firstly” with “first”; replace “medium” with “media”
Page 5: add …multiple “means” comparison…
Page 16, line 505; give the scientific name and taxonomic authority for sugarbeet
Line 514: give the scientific name and taxonomic authority for tomato
Very much improved.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
