Water Stress Thresholds and Evaluation of Coefficient Ks for Perennial Ryegrass in Tropical Conditions
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?
The Introduction section of the manuscript provides the theoretical background of the research. To date, the manuscript provides a good summary of the relevant literature related to the topic.
Is the research design appropriate?
In this manuscript, design research aims to respond to the three objectives well illustrated in the Introduction section. For this reason, the manuscript appears comprehensible from the first reading.
Are the methods adequately described?
The section Materials and Methods is described in a complete, detailed, and simple way. The six different subsections make the manuscript more intelligible to the reader.
Are the results clearly presented?
Following the changes made to the figures representing the results of this study, it can be said that the results are well explained both through tables and images.
Are the conclusions supported by the results?
The conclusions are supported by the results obtained, widely discussed both quantitatively and qualitatively. In addition, the conclusions answer the two research questions in the Introduction section.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear
Ms. Anne Zhang and reviewers:
We greatly appreciate the thorough and thoughtful comments provided on our submitted article (Manuscript ID: water- 1707487). We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and valuable improvements to our paper.
Attached below are detailed responses to all the reviewer’s comments. The latter are shown in black and our responses in red.
Please let us know if you still have any questions or concerns about the manuscript. We will be happy to address them.
Sincerely,
César Terán-Chaves
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The topic explored in this article is of great interest for forage production, in a current context of scarcity of water resources, allowing better management of irrigation and increasing water use efficiency.
However, the article has important gaps to be corrected, which are highlighted in doc. attached.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear
Ms. Anne Zhang and reviewers:
We greatly appreciate the thorough and thoughtful comments provided on our submitted article (Manuscript ID: water- 1707487). We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and valuable improvements to our paper.
Attached below are detailed responses to all the reviewer’s comments. The latter are shown in black and our responses in red.
Please let us know if you still have any questions or concerns about the manuscript. We will be happy to address them.
Sincerely,
César Terán-Chaves
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Authors did the revisions suggested that has improved the manuscript.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?
The Introduction section of the manuscript provides the theoretical background of the research. The manuscript provides a good summary of the relevant literature related to the subject. The section could be further argued by adding studies related to recent years.
Is the research design appropriate?
In this manuscript, design research aims to respond to the three objectives well illustrated in the Introduction section. For this reason, the manuscript appears comprehensible from the first reading.
Are the methods adequately described?
The section Materials and Methods is described in a complete, detailed, and simple way. The six different subsections make the manuscript more intelligible to the reader.
Are the results clearly presented?
In the Results section, the results of the analysis are well explained, and also the tables (Table 3, Table 4) simply represent the results. In contrast, both Figure 1 and Figure 2 (in addition to being poor quality images) make the results difficult to understand.
Are the conclusions supported by the results?
The conclusions are supported by the results obtained, widely discussed both quantitatively and qualitatively. In addition, the conclusions answer the two research questions in the Introduction section.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The submission looks into the effect of water stress on perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne), which is the dominant forage crop in parts of Colombia. In their experimental design, the authors vary the water content over time so that plants at different stages of growth are exposed to different water stress. This approach is unusual. While it minimises the number of trials that need to be conducted, it greatly diminishes the quality of interpretations that could be drawn from the experimental data. There are >660,000 entries in Google for the terms "effect of water stress on ryegrass physiology". The primary motivation for the study appears to be the authors' desire to look into the effect of water stress on ryegrass under Colombian conditions, but for this to come through, the authors need to clarify what behaviours that expect to be different under Colombian conditions. Their perspective also shows in the discussion, where they primarily focus on their observations without contextualising the vast literature. As a result, it is unclear what original contribution this study makes to the literature.
Reviewer 3 Report
This is an interesting study that examines physiological responses of ryegrass against water content level in tropical conditions. Climate change and extreme weather conditions are projected to affect plant growth and production in the coming years, so I think this study is timely important. Greenhouse experiments were conduced to examine the growth of ryegrass under different water level regimes and statistical analyses were used to compare the results. Although simple, the generated results provide some interesting results. I have a few comments shown below:
Abstract: I think the authors need to define “TAM” in the abstract.
Introduction: The importance and representativeness of researching ryegrass need to be better justified.
M&M section: A little more detailed information on the control experiments is needed.
Fig. 2 – 3: Are there any replicate experiments? I would think so since the authors did some statistical analysis. The replicate experiments should be reflected in the figures as well like using mean value ± standard deviation?
Conclusion: How the results providing useful guidance for future research, particularly under a rapidly changing climate with water shortage would be helpful.
