The Response of Maize Lines to Foliar Fertilizing

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Nr: agriculture-896469

Title: The response of maize lines to foliar fertilizing

Comments for the authors

The manuscript requires a major revision because the description of material and methods and presentation of the results is deficient thus the conclusions are not valid.

Abstract is too general and the results should be presented more clearly.  Do the supplement at the end of the abstract including a suggestion from the results concerning on the best fertilizer and lines

Introduction

It should be integrated with the results of amino acids fertilizers and their effects on the growing traits of the plants.

Materials and methods: What are the growing degree days? How did you determine and calculate these data. The calculation or formula must be presented in the Materials and Methods

More details about amino acids of fertilizer should be written here.

Results

Use 2010, 2011, and 2012 instead of the first second and third year in tables and trough the text –I suggest you to evaluate the weather of the years concerning on the phenological stage of development of lines

Table 4,5,6:  data of F1 and F2 as average of the years should also be presented to conclude their efficiency and the responses of maize lines. The FAO maturity group of the lines is necessary to present here.

The structure of table 3 should be changed to be easy review.

Figures (4-7): “independence” do you mean the relationship? If yes the regression equations and R values must be presented on the all figures. The relationship or correlation has to be used instead of “independence” everywhere

Conclusion is too general.

 

Others

lines 67-68: What do you mean 15-16BBCH and 21-22 BBCH? What amino acids contain the F1 fertilizer?

line 86: “biological yield”-biomass yield is better used

Figures (4-7) must be improved as above-mentioned

132 line: in title of table 6 “g plants-1” is not true, data of plant height is in cm

179-180 lines: It does not related with the subject, it should be deleted

Author Response

Dear review,

 

please find the attached document with our comments.

Thank you,

 

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of, “The Response of Maize Lines to Foliar fertilizing.”

 

General Comments

Authors conducted an extensive study on an important topic! They should be proud of their work. I encourage the authors to spend some more time on this paper and address the concerns that are outlined below. Authors owe it to themselves to produce a great paper that reflects their great experiment.

 

Title

Capitalize the letter F in fertilizing.

 

Author Affiliations

Capitalize Field and Vegetable Crops in author affiliation number 3.

 

Abstract

Lines 12-13: Provide scientific name for maize.

Lines 16-17: Labeling treatments as F1 and F2 is fine but authors should consider giving treatments easier to follow abbreviations (e.g. FAA and FP).

 

Introduction

Lines 27-29: Most plants DO NOT reach genetic yield potential.

Lines 33-40: I’m struggling to understand the place of this paragraph. Is it intending to make the case for foliar fertilization? Consider revising to have a clearer transition.

Lines 43-45: In some cases, fertilizers and herbicides can be combined.

Line 46-47: Stevia’s botanical name should be italicized. I’m also not sure why the authors are citing stevia (an aster) in a maize manuscript. There are plenty of good and relevant maize studies that will demonstrate your points more clearly.

Lines 47-48: The scientific name of wheat should be provided when introduced. Again, I’m not sure why the authors are pulling from wheat papers.

 

Materials and Methods

Lines 56-57: Which years did authors conduct this work during?

Lines 57-58: Which maize lines were used in this study? What were their maturity dates each year? This would make a good table.

Lines 59-60: Capitalize T in table.

Lines 60-61: What is “basic fertilization?” Did the study require application of pesticides?

Lines 67-68: What does BBCH mean? I’m trying to interpret this section… Were fertilizers applied at four developmental stages at the same time for each fertilizer source? If not, authors should elaborate why they chose not to apply at the same time. The study becomes a bit complicated when it compares two fertilizer types that were applied at different times and have different nutrient compositions.

Lines 98-103: Which factors were fixed and which were random?

 

Results

Line 105: Authors should consider providing an ANOVA table at the start of the results section to guide readers through the remainder of the manuscript.

Table 4 and following tables: Why is F1 now listed as nitrogen foliar fertilizer when it was labeled as fertilizer with amino acids in the abstract? Same for F2?

Table 5: Why didn’t authors present SE in this table? Did authors observe significant difference?

Figures 4, 5, 6, and 7: Authors may consider providing r values and equations for linear regressions.

Lines 155-156: There is no obvious correlation in figures 4 and 5.

 

 

Author Response

Dear review,

 

Please find the attached documents with our comments.

Thank you,

 

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have performed the corrections of manuscript according to the proposals.

However I found some mistakes that should be corrected before publications.

238-239 lines- Please control the correlations between FM and GY in FP treatment R²=0.9371 because it was not the same on Fig.6 (R²=0.8464) and R²=0.8738 (in control) disagree that of Fig 7 (R²=0.7593).

302 line: correct “thet” to that

Author Response

The authors are thankful for all suggestion and again for the paper improvement. 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors did a good job with revisions. 

 

It is unclear when products were applied in Table 3 and Table 4 is unclear.

Author Response

The authors are thankful for all sugestion and help during revision process.

We have accepted all suggestion.