Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study entitled "Design and Validation of a Low Cost Programmable Controlled Environment for Study and Production of Plants, Mushroom, and Insect Larvae" presents a low cost programmable device designed to facilitate studies in organisms (e.g. plants, fungi or insect larvae). Designed device with controlled environment was successfully used to study (i) photosynthesis in Ocimum basilicum and (ii) evolution of metabolic activity of Hermetia illucens larvae over its larval phase. The manuscript is well organized and well written and only some shortcomings or typographical errors can be found in text (see questions and comments below). The quality level of graphics and graphical presentation comply with publishing requirements.

The proposed equipment certainly has a wide potential and can be used in many sectors. The price and the ability to produce it using today's commercially available 3D printing is an ideal choice. It is possible to use equipment for scientific experiments.

Would it be possible to use this device or a similar approach in some inhospitable areas (stations in Antarctica, test colonies for the settlement of Mars - Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station) too? Would it make sense and bring some benefits? What possible adjustments would be necessary? The advantage of this application would be easy maintenance, easy on-site repair or possible extension. What is lacking in the study and should be specified is energy demand, ie energy consumption. Overall, it would be useful to summarize the basic technical parameters in a clear table. Figure 10 shows the system response. However, the sensors are in the middle of the device, but what happens in the whole volume, for example when the temperature fluctuates? Is the temperature distribution uniform? Is time needed to whole system equilibration same as presented in the study? Would it not be possible to support this experiment using an infrared camera or at least several sensors, as part of testing? Similarly, e.g. with humidity. The use of LED lighting is certainly a great energy saving solution. But what about the uniformity of light intensity? A 2D or 3D map would certainly be beneficial. If an increased concentration of some gas (water, CO₂, O₂) is required, is it not unnecessarily leaking through the fans? What is the real CO₂ consumption of a typical biological experiment? Is the possibility of water recycling introduced? If, for example, a five-fold increase in equipment was considered, how would this affect the design? Would it be possible to use equally cheap segments? Is it possible to prove the consumption of electricity and gases for exepriments performed? In other words, what was the financial cost of running the experiment?

 

OTHER COMMENTS:

Page 6, Table 1: Please use correct "minus sign" symbol for numbers. Page 12, Line 333: Please use correct "minus sign" symbol for "-20 %". Please check and correct this in the entire text. Page 12, Line 336 and 337: Please use hard space betwwen number and symbol °C in "20 °C" and "10 °C". Please check and correct this in the entire text. Page 13, Line 357: Please use not "-" in "10-90% RH" but "en dash" symbol. Page 13, Line 362 and 363: Please use "ppm" instead of "PPM". Add hard space between number and unit. Page 14, Line 399: please correct the typing error " decreases ,reaching".

Plagiarism was not detected, 5 % similarity index in Crossref was found.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript describes controlled environment for study and production of various organisms including plants, fungi and larvae. The parameters of such environment, including temperature, humidity CO2 concentration and light spectrum has been discussed.

Authors presented well designed, multidisciplinary research, that combines the knowledge in biology, chemistry, electronics and information technology. The manuscript is well written, with introduction, components of the design, results and conclusions presented in a clear manner and sufficient detail.

I suggest to accept the manuscript after minor revision. Several minor issues that need correction or clarification include:

- In the introduction (lines 46-48) authors state that two types of plants, two types of fungi and two types of larvae will be considered in this work. However in the results only one type of each organism group is considered (sections 3.3., 3.5. and 3.6.) 

- In Fig. 1 arrows representing data flow goes in both direction. Sensors data is used as an input for the controller, but does the data flow in opposite direction occurs as well?

- In part 2.2.2. Authors describe the application they've developed to control the chamber parameters. It is not clear for the reviewer if end-user need to purchase Matlab Simulink or can the environment control be done only via widgets. Adding a screenshot of user interface would be beneficial for the reader. Furthermore including the relevant code (or the executables) in Supporting Information can increase the likelihood of applying authors design by other scientists.

- Authors design did not include the sensors for measuring the radiant flux and (as they stated in lines 381-383) the lack of sensor feedback limits the control of generated light spectrum and any drift in spectral composition cannot be compensated. What is the reason behind not including these sensors?

- Is the design presented by authors easily extendable (e.g. can other types of sensors and actuators be used, or does it require significant changes in software used)? This should be stated in the conclusions.

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors demonstrate an experimental growth chamber to study, e.g., plant growth accurately. The description is very complete in regards to the description of the software and hardware that is used. I would suggest minor modifications to the manuscript:

There are several grammar mistakes scattered through the paper; I will only list examples for the first few pages: line 3: "Commercial growth chambers does not...."; line 7: constitutes -> consists?; line 9: "Actuators ...is proposed"; line 55: "literatures" Several figures are on the very limit of visibility. I suggest to change the size of several figures in the manuscript, e.g., Fig. 2 and 4. Line 62 and following lists requirements for the device, such as an open source software framework. It is not entirely clear to me why that is a requirement, and if it is, why it only holds for software and not hardware. In addition to that they mention an application development framework based on Matlab Simulink, which is a proprietary license. Similar to point 3, requirements are listed for the software (lines 216+); one requirement is "Expert knowledge input for optical chamber operation". It is strange that expert knowledge is a requirement for the use of the software. Line 108 lists a selection of TECs that have been considered for the chamber. The eventual choice was made to use a 14.5 V and 126 W TEC. Line 199 mentions to wish to run the entire system on a 12 V source. Does that include the TEC? It would be nice to see the power supply in Figure 6. Equation (4), line 353, contains an equation relying on numerical values. The meaning of those numbers, also with respect to their unit, is not clear from the manuscript. T is expected to be a temperature, but no unit is given (and it is added to a unitless quantity). Is this in K, Celsius, or any other unit? The authors list the sensitivities of the sensors in their growth chamber, such as in Table 1. What is missing would be an indication of the required sensitivity levels regarding the proposed applications for this device, e.g., is one degC accuracy enough, or 1% O2? The bibliography has a way of referencing that is difficult to read, as there is no separator between the authors and the title of the resource. See reference 4 for an illustrating case.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf