Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this good paper.

In general I found it very clear and scientifically sound. I have just some minor request for edits or comments:

In the abstracts, the authors could add a couple of sentences on the conclusions and the usefulness of the research. Reference [2] is quite old. I am sure there is something more up to date. The introduction could be significantly shortened and made clearer. It is clear that the authors wanted to report as many info as possible, but it is not easy to follow the logic of the introduction: it reads like several unrelated information and some of them are not useful for the research. For example all the discussion from row 63 and 76 is very long and not easy to grasp the usefulness for the research. Also the info on flowering. In general, I think the introduction should be simplified and some unnecessary info removed. On row 99, why is it 'but also'. I don't see the relation between the fact that oilseed rape is dependent on whether and the N efficiency. To me they seem to different things. I would use 'and'. On row 117, I suggest to put 'sowing date trial' in brackets or at least introduce clearly the terminology of the trials. I would expect to see the sowing dates in table 1 Introduce 'F test' in the text After row 296, it would be good to remind to the reader the characteristics of those years. Even if long/unnecessary, I would still add a legend for mnx, mtx, etc to figures 7 and 8. The discussion is good but the discussion should be based on the results, and please avoid/remove all considerations which are not based or directly relevant for the research (for example I did not understand the relevance for the research of the discussion of rows 536-544). I think the discussion could be shortened or enriched with considerations directly linked to the core of the research.

There are small English/editing problems. For example, on row 61 is it 'end'? On row 90 it should be affectS. On row 376, I think it should be 'in our study, winter rapeseed was used..'.

Anyway I think overall it's a very good paper and congratulations to the authors.

Author Response

Respected reviewer 1,

We did our best to revise manuscript according to your suggestions:

Abstract – we added sentences in the conclusion about usefulness of the research

Reference [2] – we deleted it

Introduction – we tried to make it clearer and simplified

Row 99 – instead of „but also“ we wrote „and“

Row 117 – we added abbreviation for sowing date trial (SD)

Table 1 – we added explanation bellow table

Introduce F test – we added reference for F test as it is common test to evaluate the significance of variables in the effects of the treatments. We also added this explanation in the row 210

Row 296 – we wrote characteristics of the years

Figures – we added legend for figures 7, 8 and 9

Discussion – we tried to improve it, make it shorter and more relevant

Row 61 – we added „ are stopping the“

Row 90 – we corrected to „affects“

Row 376 – we corrected that paragraph

Thank you very much for your time, for any further questions we are at your disposal.

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript describes the analysis of the effect of different climatic variables on seed yield and oil content in winter rapeseed, over years, sowing dates, nitrogen dosages and genotypes. The authors presented the critical stages in rapeseed development, and the climatic factors that act as a main determinant for the target traits. Therefore, the topic of this manuscript is interesting to the audience of Agronomy and I recommend it for publication.

Overall the paper is well written and needs only some minor corrections listed below.

Line 35: I suggest introducing the term “canola” indicating it as another name for rapeseed.

Line 68: remove the comma after “drought stress”.

Table 4: I suggest changing the labels as shown in the text (e.i. change YxC in CxY etc.)

Table 5: I suggest removing the line below “Year” and the “a” close to SD1.

Line 268: I think the authors refereed to “significantly different oil content from Banacanka and Jet Neuf” at least based on the LSD test I see in the table.

In all figures the letters “a” and “b” are missing in the respective panels. The same cultivars are displayed with different colour code in the different figures (e.i. Samourai is presented in green in figure 1 and in light blue in figure 2). Please be consistent and use the same colour code/symbol code for every cultivar in all figures.

The authors presented the results in Fig. 1 to 6 as “significantly different…..” but no statistical tests are shown. Please present the statistical tests.

Fig.2: the y axis title of the panel “a” seems covered by the axis values.

Line 273: I suggest to refer to Fig 1a and 1b when speaking about the highest overall oil content.

Line 287: I think the authors refereed to “except for Samourai” instead of Jet Neuf…..at least based on the colour code I see in Fig. 3.

Fig.5: Please change the Y axis scale from 0 to 5.

Line 342: “Considering the N x Y interaction” and not SD x Y.

Line 456: “targeted”

Author Response

Respected reviewer 2,

We did our best to revise manuscript according to your suggestions:

Line 35 – we excluded the therm „canola“, we think it is simpler just to write rapeseed

Line 68 – we removed the comma

Table 4 – we changed the labels

Table 5 – we removed the line bellow „Year“ and the „a“ close to SD1

Line 268 – we corrected it to and significantly different oil content from ‘Banaćanka’ and ‘Jet Neuf’

Figures – we added letters „a“ and „b“ and we unified the colour code in the figures

We also corrected presenting the results in Fig. 1 to 6 as „significantly different“ as we did not showed statistical tests

Fig. 2 – we corrected it

Line 273 – we refered to Fig. 1a and 1b

Line 287 – we refered to „except for Samourai“

Fig 5 - Figure 5 axis scale was not changed as it is generated automatically by the statistical software to maximise visibility of the treatment effect. If the axis scale started from 0 the presented differences would be less visible.

Line 342 – instead of writting „N rate x Y“ we corrected it to „T x Y“ as it is treatments x year

Line 456 – we corrected to „targeted“

Thank you very much for your time, for any further questions we are at your disposal.