Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Hops are among the important plant species used in the production of alcoholic beverages. The authors wrote the article in a simple and academic language and used good English. However, as in every article, there are important deficiencies in some points.

When the conclusion section of the study is examined, there are quite a few bearish outputs. Why didn't you include them in the abstract?

Why was the method used in the article chosen? Couldn't it be compared with other methods?

Plant phenology can be affected by various factors. Therefore, this study was planned by ignoring these.

In addition, the study outputs are not presented well. The data could be presented in a modern way with graphics etc.

The figures used are not clear and blurry.

THE MOST important point is that the discussion section is written haphazardly. The conclusion section is also seriously deficient.

In light of all these, I believe that the study cannot be published in the journal.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. Latin names in the title should be italicized.

2. All images in the manuscript are Figure 1, please modify the title.

3. “BBCH” appears in the text for the first time without annotation until line 120.

4. Why are the number of replicates and the number of hills contained in each replicate different between subarid and subtropical environments? There are also differences in other experimental conditions.

5. The manuscript says “Figure 2” in line 141, but the title is “Figure 1” in line 143.

6. What is the basis for the classification of the four growth stages? It is recommended to modify it to skip phenological growth stages.

7. There should be a secondary title under the results to analyze the experimental results.

8. The discussion needs to be adjusted.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

General comments

The analyzed manuscript aims to contribute to a better knowledge of the growth and development stages of hops by using the BBCH decimal unit code, by integrating the growth/development characteristics in a unitary coding system, but with specific addressability.

The two cultivation environments are different (semi-arid – Sicily and subtropical – Florida), which allowed differentiated evaluations of the growth and development stages through varied temperature and humidity norms.

In principle, the experimental process started from the hypothesis of the existence of a direct and positive relationship between the growth rate of plant size and the stages of plant development.

The research methodology is simple, based on a limited set of parameters and an impressive number of tested non-linear regression models.

Cu toate acestea, manuscrisul prezintă o serie de lacune care atentează serios la calitatea și autenticitatea rezultatelor. According to modern research techniques, the use of a single evaluation parameter (in this case HGR) seems insufficient to be able to verify the veracity of the hypothesis. Most studies that have addressed this topic have relied on a set of characters (morphological, phenological, physiological and even biochemical) of the plant to characterize plant growth associated with developmental stages.

Specific objections

Title; - scientific names in italics

ABSTRACT- no terms of vegetative development are used in plants... In general, growth is related to the vegetative stages, and the development to the generative ones...

-        The main results obtained are not clearly presented

INTRODUCTION

- the conditions to present analytically the current state of the art in the topic field by referring to the informations from in the main flow are not met. General data on the importance of hop cultivation are presented, there are numerous model, personalized studies in the literature that can be used for the integrated characterization of the BBCH (growth and development) stages of development in other plant species. These can be referred to...

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Experimental sites and crop management

               - lines 80-81- The trade name of foliar fertilization products does not help... Please provide data on their composition,

               - excessive technical details are provided on the type and mode of operation of irrigation systems,

               - The climatic conditions specific to each location are not described, as it is known that they decisively influence the growth rate and the stages of life.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The results are presented correctly, validating the obtaining of regression equations based on the determinations made and the expert observations used by using the BBCH code.

Discussion of the results is limited, probably due to the small number of studies conducted in this direction.

CONCLUSIONS

The conclusions stated do not always have a direct link to the results obtained.

Some concrete conclusions were better presented in the discussion chapter.

REFERENCES

The bibliography is varied, but very limited.

The manuscript needs a detailed analysis and a lot of improvements for future resubmission.

Good luck!

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Colleagues

Your work dealing with phenological assessment of hops could be of some interest for the researchers, but I had to read it several times to understand the statistics and still I am in trouble: the confusion matrices are not very common in agricultural studies do you have some bibliography to show about the application of this statistics? I had to study a bit I admit since I never applied this kind of statistics and still it is difficult to understand your tables. Are the numbers in the table number of observations (plants?) But which numbers represents the instances in the actual class and which the predicted class? In M&M you described exactly the 2.1 issues related to sites and management, but it is unclear how you collected the data from the plants: how many plants did you checked on weekly basis? Did you always measure and check exactly the same plants? I am sorry I am reading and reading the paper but I cannot understand the meaning of your tables 3 and 4 and both the caption and the text are not explaining anything to me. 34, 32 31 and 56 are the number of actual plants you scored at each stage and they were distributed in the developmental stages in different way? Did you score a different number of plants in each week or did you follow the same plants during the season? Why you have a match of 71% respect to what? Maybe it is my fault but if you explain better both in the M&M and in table legend maybe I can understand.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has partially implemented my suggestions. Even if the article cannot be improved much, it can be accepted by the editor's decision.

Author Response

Comment 1: The author has partially implemented my suggestions. Even if the article cannot be improved much, it can be accepted by the editor's decision.

Response: thank you for your time and attention. We are submitting some new improvements according to the Editor's requests.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The questions I raised have been answered and revised in the article. This article is acceptable.

Author Response

Comment 1: The questions I raised have been answered and revised in the article. This article is acceptable.

Response: Thank you for your time and attention. Best regards.