Development of a Quarantine Postharvest Treatment against Guatemalan Potato Moth (Tecia solanivora Povolny)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This manuscript describes the new study on potato postharvest treatments for preserve Tecia solanivora Povolny to give the high quality and postharvest store. This manuscript is fully given all linking methods to provide a new study for postharvest stores of potatoes. The paper is well written, the text is clear and easy to read. The conclusions are consistent with the evidence and arguments presented. There are several problems that should be corrected in the revised version.
- Lines 37-40:
Authors should give references to these sentences.
- Lines 57-58:
Authors should give references of the sentence.
- Lines 84-92:
Authors should give references to these sentences.
- Result Part: Insect mortality curves
Have the authors tried to apply 25% carbon dioxide for the treatment of the exposition of the insects? Authors should try to apply the concentration of carbon dioxide related to 15% and 25%. It is more interesting with the reader and it will reduce the cost for postharvest stores.
Author Response
Thank you very much for all your comments. We have addressed them trying to enrich the article as you pointed out.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Manuscript ID: Agri-1327769
Title: Development of a quarantine postharvest treatment against Guatemalan potato moth (Tecia solanivora Povolny)
Authors: Lobo et al.
General comments:
This paper reported development of controlled atmosphere treatment for quarantine control of Guatemalan potato moth. The study is comprehensive covering efficacy of different treatment against all life stages of the pest, effects of selected treatment on germination and viability of seed potatoes, effects on organoleptic properties, semi-commercial trials and commercial scale trials. The study was well designed and conducted. Data were also reasonably well analyzed, described, and discussed. The study achieved complete control of the pest without significant negative impact of viability and quality of different potato varieties and, therefore, has practical implications for control of the pest. However, there are also major problems with the paper that requires a major revision. Writing needed to be concise and fluent. There are also many errors in choices of words and sentence structures. There are also lacks of details in methods such as sample sizes, replications, and statistical methods. More details should also be added to tables and figures to make them self explanatory. Some of more specific suggested revisions are listed below.
Specific comments:
Abstract needs to be simplified to reduce introduction to the pest and remove all references. Add more details on methods and results and implications for practical applications of the CA treatment.
Introduction: Remove the first sentence. Give a direct introduction to the pest, its economic importance, and the current lack of effective treatment.
Line 61: Remove “natural”
Line 62: Change “create hard-to-see holes in the” to “penetrate”
Lines 69-83: Condense or remove this paragraph as most information is not relevant to the study.
Lines 84-93: Please expand on economic injuries and current phytosanitary measurements against the pest.
Lines 136-147: For the treatments, were O2 and CO2 levels measured during and at the end of the treatments?
Line 161: Change “fun to move the atmosphere” to “fan to circulate air”
Line 165: For this section, please give sample numbers in each test and replications.
Line 173: Please give number of replications for each treatment for this section.
Line 182: Please give treatment time here.
Line 186: For this experiment, were O2 and CO2 measured during and at the end of treatment? Respiration of stored fresh products would consume O2 and release CO2. Therefore, O2 level would decrease and CO2 level would increase over time during treatment. These changes can have impacts on postharvest quality. Since the relative ratios of O2 and CO2 were not actively maintained, it is important to calculate and report loading ratios in the chambers as high loading ratios would lead to faster decreases and increases of O2 and CO2 levels. Also need to state sample numbers in each test and replications.
Line 204: For this section, please give numbers of samples each panelist tried.
Line 220: There is no information on treatment duration and temperature for this section.
Line 375: Delete “used”
Line 396: This statement “…carbon dioxide do not affect the sprout capacity or yield…” is not consistent with “…weight of control potatoes was significantly lower…” [line 391] and “…the num-392 ber of tubers was slightly lower…” [lines 392-393], and data in Table 3.
Table 1: Please add total numbers of insects for each treatment and each life stage. Specify what statistical method was used to compare treatments in the note.
Table 2: Need to list the number of samples for each treatment.
Table 3: Need to list the number of potatoes for each variety and treatment. Also give statistical method used to compare means in the note.
Tables 1-4: Revise titles and foot notes to make tables self explanatory with basic parameters of treatments and data analysis and complete data. For example, title for table 4 can be “Effects of 10? day treatment with 30% CO2 controlled atmosphere at 20C on survival of Tecia solanivora at different life stages in semi-commercial trials”.
Tables 4-5: Use English for insect life stages.
Line 467: Change “sensible and an exposition at” to “susceptible and an exposure to”
Lines 468-469: The statement “Moreover, adults died within minutes of being exposed to CO2.” Is not correct. CO2 gas is used as an insect anesthetic in laboratories. After knockdown, insects will recover.
Line 476: Change “to caused 100%...” to “to achieve (or reach) 100%...”
Line 478: Spell out what treatments were in the combination: low O2 and high CO2 or something else.
Author Response
First of all, we would like to thank you for all the valuable suggestions, comments, and advice you have made in our article. We have tried to address them all.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Authors made meaningful improvement to the manuscript. However, the writing of the manuscript can still be further improved to make more readable. I recommend another round of revision. Some specific comments are listed below:
Line 189: Change “Solanum berosum” to “S. berosum” since the same genus is used before (line 188).
Line 194: Change “10” to “Ten”. Don’t start a sentence with a number.
Line 207: Change “2” to “Two”. Don’t start a sentence with a number.
Lines 495-501: Suggested change: Fig 4. External and dissection views of infested potatoes at different infestation stages. At the early stage or low infestation level, potatoes appeared healthy even though they were infested internally by neonates. As neonate larvae developed over time or at higher infestation intensities, potatoes showed increased exit holes of mature larvae on external surfaces as they left to pupate and intensified stain and larger larvae on dissection surfaces, and, thereby, became unacceptable commercially.
Lines 578-580: Suggested change: “In this study, we conducted two semi-commercial trials and two commercial trials. The two types of trials differed in scale and level of automatic control.”
Line 581: Change “Tecia solanivora Povolny” to “T. solanivora” since this is not first mentioning of the species.
Author Response
We really appreciate all your comments and suggestions and we have addressed them all. We also have checked the English style and make some changes.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
