Evaluation of Combination Fungicides for Charcoal Rot and Collar Rot Management in Soybean

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript addresses the effectiveness of combination seed-treatment fungicides in controlling charcoal rot and collar rot diseases in soybean under controlled and field conditions. Among the tested fungicides, thiophanate methyl + pyraclostrobin and penflufen + trifloxystrobin significantly reduced disease severity while enhancing agronomic traits and economic returns. The following points need to be addressed before acceptance:

1.      The manuscript title, "Evaluation of New Combi Product Seed Treatment Fungicides Against Charcoal Rot and Collar Rot Diseases of Soybean," is mostly clear but could be more concise. It can be modified to: "Evaluating Combination Fungicides for Charcoal and Collar Rot Management in Soybean."

2.      The abstract should be revised to avoid redundancy, particularly regarding the description of fungicides and their efficacy, which is unnecessarily repeated.

3.      The research gap should be elaborated further, as the introduction lacks a strong justification for testing these specific combination fungicides. Are these combinations novel? Are they expected to be more effective than current standards? If so, why?

4.      Enhance Figure 1 by adding annotations or visual highlights to clearly demonstrate how treatments align with key outcomes, such as disease reduction or yield improvement, making the PCA results more intuitive and impactful.

5.      Create bar or line charts to visualize key results, such as disease severity reductions (AUDPC or incidence) across treatments, and yield comparisons between treatments in different years or conditions.

6.      In the discussion, elaborate more on the biological and chemical actions of the fungicides, and explain how they reduce disease severity. Also, address the potential impacts of environmental factors on the effectiveness of treatments.

7.      Add specific recommendations and future directions at the end of the manuscript.

8.      The entire manuscript should be revised by a native English expert to improve clarity and readability.

Author Response

Response to the Reviewers

We thank the Editor for giving us an opportunity to address the suggestions made by the Reviewers and resubmit the manuscript. We are grateful to the Reviewers for their efforts in reviewing the manuscript and providing valuable comments and suggestions which helped us to improve the overall quality of the work. In the revised manuscript, we have addressed all the suggestions of the Reviewers and provided clarifications for all the queries raised by them.

1. The manuscript title, "Evaluation of New Combi Product Seed Treatment Fungicides Against Charcoal Rot and Collar Rot Diseases of Soybean," is mostly clear but could be more concise. It can be modified to: "Evaluating CombinationFungicides for Charcoal and Collar Rot Management in Soybean."

Action: We have changed title Evaluating Combination Fungicides for Charcoal and Collar Rot Management in Soybean

 

2. The abstract should be revised to avoid redundancy, particularly regarding the description of fungicides and their efficacy, which is unnecessarily repeated.

Action: We have modified abstract

3. The research gap should be elaborated further, as the introduction lacks a strong justification for testing these specific combination fungicides. Are these combinations novel? Are they expected to be more effective than current standards? If so, why?

Action: We have modified introduction. Currently, soybean farmers in India have access to only four authorized and recommended seed-dressing fungicides following the government's ban on several fungicides. These include thiophanate methyl + pyraclostrobin, penflufen + trifloxystrobin, carboxin + thiram, and carbendazim + mancozeb, which are relatively new to the Indian market. Previously, carbendazim and thiram were recommended for soybean cultivation; however, they were recently deregistered for this crop. As they are broad specturum fungicide so they are expected to be more effective against range of pathogens.

4. Enhance Figure 1 by adding annotations or visual highlights to clearly demonstrate how treatments align with key outcomes, such as disease reduction or yield improvement, making the PCA results more intuitive and impactful.

Action: We have modified PCA figure

5. Create bar or line charts to visualize key results, such as disease severity reductions (AUDPC or incidence) across treatments, and yield comparisons between treatments in different years or conditions.

Action: We have created bar chart for that

 

6. In the discussion, elaborate more on the biological and chemical actions of the fungicides, and explain how they reduce disease severity. Also, address the potential impacts of environmental factors on the effectiveness of treatments.

Action: We have improved discussions

7. Add specific recommendations and future directions at the end of the manuscript.

Action: We have added specific recommendations and future directions

8. The entire manuscript should be revised by a native English expert to improve clarity and readability.

Action: We have revised manuscript with help of English editing software.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of several combinations of seed treatment fungicides on the resistance to Charcoal rot and Collar rot disease of Indian soybeans. The experimental protocol is well-designed and described, and the results are well-documented. However, as detailed in the comments, the expression of some sentences could be further improved.

Line 97, 98: This statement is not clear enough, and it is suggested to be deleted.

Line 110: Do you mean the isolate of M. phaseolina was obtained from this study, while S. rolfsii was obtained from your previous studies, and both of them were identified based on the colonies characteristics? It's better to provide the colony pictures of each pathogen.

Line 122-124: The expression of this sentence is a bit verbose, please improve it.

Line 127: Please confirm whether it should be "Three" or "Four".

Line 184-187: Four combinations of fungicides were tested under controlled conditions, and why these three combinations of fungicides were selected in the field conditions?

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to the Reviewers

We thank the Editor for giving us an opportunity to address the suggestions made by the Reviewers and resubmit the manuscript. We are grateful to the Reviewers for their efforts in reviewing the manuscript and providing valuable comments and suggestions which helped us to improve the overall quality of the work. In the revised manuscript, we have addressed all the suggestions of the Reviewers and provided clarifications for all the queries raised by them.

Q1 Line 97, 98: This statement is not clear enough, and it is suggested to be deleted.

Action: We changed the sentence

Q2 Line 110: Do you mean the isolate of M. phaseolina was obtained from this study, while S. rolfsii was obtained from your previous studies, and both of them were identified based on the colonies characteristics? It's better to provide the colony pictures of each pathogen.

Action: We changed the sentence. The S. rolfsii was also used in other studies. We can picture of isolate as supp fig 1

Q3 Line 122-124: The expression of this sentence is a bit verbose, please improve it.

Action: We have changed the sentence

Q4 Line 127: Please confirm whether it should be "Three" or "Four".

Action: We have changed to four

Q5 Line 184-187: Four combinations of fungicides were tested under controlled conditions, and why these three combinations of fungicides were selected in the field conditions?

Action: Because one fungicide was not found effective against S. rolfsii in glasshouse condition

Q6 You need to be cautious about expressing this sentence that there are currently no commercially resistant cultivars as this reference is from 2018. Are there any new researches regarding this in recent years?

Action: No commercially resistant cultivars are available for soybean against collar rot and charcoal rot diseases in India as per my knowledge. As recently only few varieties was released by government of India and none of having resistant against collar rot and charcoal rot diseases.

Q7. This statement is not clear enough, and it is suggested to be deleted.

Action: The statement is deleted

Q8 Line 86 and Line 87 add the and method

Action: The and Methods added

Q9 Have you considered whether the treatment with fungicides has any physiological effects on the germination and vigour of soybean seeds?

Action: we consider root and shoot weight in glass house condition and seed yield, seed index at epiphytootic condition

Q10 Line 117 changed

Action: we changed accordingly

Q11 What is the basis for the different temperature ranges for these two pathogen (compared to the line 163)?

Action: The M. phaseolina wrequired higher temperature than S. rolfsii for symptom expression therefore we choosed different temperature for both the pathogens

Q12 Changed sentence in line 276, 576, and 543.

Action: we haved changed sentences in line 276, 576, and 543.

 

 

 

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Presented work describes the effectivenes of various combined treatments against two phytopathogens. This issue is highly relevant due to large crop losses caused by these fungi. I find the experiments designed appropriatly and supported with some statistics and costs evaluations. The treatments were tested both in vitro and in the fields with appropriate control groups. The results are relevant especially for thiophanate methyl + pyraclostrobin treatment. I have some concerns about the control descriptions - in some paragraphs authors say "treatments uninoculated control" while in other "uninoculated control" - is it the same? Also in line 294 there is "treatments inoculated control" which I find confusing.

In introduction (line 100) authors refer to phytopathogens as diseases but they are rather disease or infection agents/factors.

In the discussion there is no comment on the safety of those treatments.

Lastly, the conclusion part is relatively weak and should be elaborated since the results of these studies seem to be important to the field.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I had a problem with understanding and focusing in the Materials and methods and Results sections. They are written chaotically, sentences are very long and there are multiple language errors throughout the manuscript. Below I give some examples but whole text should be checked:

line 99 – phytopathogens

line 101 – that exist or among various existing

line 120 – isolate of; characteristic growth features like white cottony…

line 122 – shoudn't be sclerotium?

line 278 – differed or was different

line 292 – did not

line 334 – was found superior to all other…

line 348 – this indicated that

4. Discussion (not Discussions)

Also, the commas are inserted arbitrarily, which hinders the readability of the text.

Author Response

Response to the Reviewers

We thank the Editor for giving us an opportunity to address the suggestions made by the Reviewers and resubmit the manuscript. We are grateful to the Reviewers for their efforts in reviewing the manuscript and providing valuable comments and suggestions which helped us to improve the overall quality of the work. In the revised manuscript, we have addressed all the suggestions of the Reviewers and provided clarifications for all the queries raised by them.

Q1  I have some concerns about the control descriptions - in some paragraphs authors say "treatments uninoculated control" while in other "uninoculated control" - is it the same? Also in line 294 there is "treatments inoculated control" which I find confusing.

Action: We have removed treatments world before uninoculated control. "treatments uninoculated control" and "uninoculated control" is one treatment only.

Q2 In introduction (line 100) authors refer to phytopathogens as diseases but they are rather disease or infection agents/factors.

Action: We have changed sentences

Q3 In the discussion there is no comment on the safety of those treatments.

Action: All the fungicides are safe to soybean as they are only registered fungicide for soybean. During the research we didn’t observe any phytotoxicity effect on soybean.

Q 4 Lastly, the conclusion part is relatively weak and should be elaborated since the results of these studies seem to be important to the field.

Action: We have changed conclusion

Q5  I had a problem with understanding and focusing in the Materials and methods and Results sections. They are written chaotically, sentences are very long and there are multiple language errors throughout the manuscript. Below I give some examples but whole text should be checked:

line 99 – phytopathogens

Action: We have changed sentence

line 101 – that exist or among various existing

Action: We have changed sentence

line 120 – isolate of; characteristic growth features like white cottony…

Action: We have changed sentence

line 122 – shoudn't be sclerotium?

Action: We have changed sentence

line 278 – differed or was different

Action: We have changed sentence

line 292 – did not

Action: We have changed sentence

line 334 – was found superior to all other…

Action: We have changed sentence

line 348 – this indicated that

Action: We have changed sentence

4. Discussion (not Discussions

Action: We have changed discussion part

Q6 Also, the commas are inserted arbitrarily, which hinders the readability of the text.

Action: we have changed the text as per recommendation.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript has been significantly improved and has much better reception.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

In corrected paragraphs I noticed several spelling errors.

Author Response

Comment 1 In corrected paragraphs I noticed several spelling errors.

Action:  We have revised manuscript with help of English editing software.