Grapevine Sap Flow in Response to Physio-Environmental Factors under Solar Greenhouse Conditions
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Wei et al. collected a neat data set with the objective of identifying the physiological and environmental factors driving vine sap flow in a greenhouse. Overall it is a well-writen paper but besides some minor corrections and comments I annotated in the text and some major ones reported below, my major concern is that the manuscript in its current state is too descriptive, with too general objectives and lack of a hypothesis which make the authors fail to highlight the novelty of their work. I suggest them to re-write the objectives to make them more specific and show only the results necessary to acknowledge their objectives. For example, they show the meteorological data outside the greenhouse and inside but in their objectives there is not such comparison. However, they do not show the stomatal conductance values even if they say in M&M they measure it and could be important for their objectives.
Major comments:
In the M&M the authors must specify in which trees some of the measurements they report are conducted (see my notes in the pdf), are they measured in the monitored trees?.
I suggest the authors to read the paper by Lemeur et al. Acta Horticulturae 846: 21- 34 (2009) to use correctly the sap flow-related terms. Specifically, with the stem heat balance method you measure sap flow and not sap flux density, which is measured with the single-point methods, as for example the Heat Pulse methods.
In M&M they must include a Statistical section.
Also, the authors report transpiration in mm in Fig. 1. As the stem heat balance reports data on g/h, those mm must be calculated using an area but it is not specified in M&M. Please, specify those calculations and clarify if it is transpiration per sapwood area, leaf area, canopy projection area, etc. In the rest of the figures SFD is given in g/h so I wonder if the transpiration from fig. 1 is calculated differently? Please, specify.
Importantly, in Fig. 3, the authors claim they are showing a relationship between SFD and LAI but they do not report the equation, R2 or p-value. I think what they are showing is a boundary line and then they should correct the text.
In Fig. 4 they say there is a relationship between SWC and SFD but the p shows this is not significant.
In the results, the authors mention the results of other works as well as speculate about them. I suggest them to move these parts to discussion. I started to indicate in the text what parts they must move to Discussion but there are several so I stopped.
In fig. 4 and the rest of the figures they report VPD, T and RH which is redundant. With VPD is enough because it is calculated using T and RH.
The conclusions are basically a summary of their results. Try to write the implications of your study and how it helps to advance in the science of vine transpiration in greenhouses.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Minor editorial suggestions are attached.
The manuscript is occasionally a bit wordy.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I accepted the manuscript but I still suggest the authors to delete the summary of results from the conclusions and just leave the last paragraph the wrote in this last version which are the real conclusions.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx