Rootstock Effects on Anthocyanin Accumulation and Associated Biosynthetic Gene Expression and Enzyme Activity during Fruit Development and Ripening of Blood Oranges

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Rootstock effecting on anthocyanin accumulation, with a better understanding on which mechanism can contribute to improve the fruit quality. The work revealed the phenotyping and contents of anthocyanin concentration together with some of the key genes expression level and enzymes mediated. The study is well designed, and the goal is innovation. The presentation of the manuscript need to be improved.

The title is too long, need to be condensed, for instance, to indicate the main finding in gene expression and enzyme activity which affects to phenotypes or accumulation most.

Language needs to be polished; some points are hard to understand.

• Page 1 line 20 “general”?, “and 20 “the expression” of what?; line 28, “best, most,” such words are not suitable to be presented here. as a suggestion for commercial purpose worldwide. ?

Page 2 line 70 “scanty”

Page 2 from line 83 this paragraph for enzymes in anthocyanin biosynthesis better to rewritten

Page 3 line 101 first sentence rewritten.

Line 105 will reveal ->reveals

…

Again, the remaining text need to be carefully reading and modified.

Page 3 line 111, 2.1 how many trees were those fruits from?

Fig.1 scale bar location is a bit strange, how about to the bottom right?

Fig.2A error bar is missing

Page 11 line 351,“In the general phenylpropanoid pathway, then In the early/late biosynthetic pathway,” How to divide them? An explanation need to be shown. The similar statement appeared in the last discussion line 467.

The main point, In the abstracts, Page 1 line 23-25, by saying “affect” and “correlation” is not enough as a conclusion here. The same problem counts in the discussion part regarding to this gene expression and enzyme activity. There should not be as simple as “correlated negative or positive”. Since many gene expression levels and enzyme activities have been tested, the authors need to think more deeply how to present your data. For example, to fit the results in an Anthocyanin accumulation mechanism flow chart. ? The flow chart has been well established; however, from the present work the author can contribute more information rather than to list a general statement. Moreover, why not to compare the time scale, the content among the species?

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewers,

We sincerely thank you and the reviewers for valuable comments and suggesionts, which were of great help in improving our manuscript (Manuscript ID: agriculture-1597512). All authors have carefully considered these comments and tried our best to address every one of them. Below we provide the point-to-point responses to the comments. The revised portions are marked in red in the paper.

On behalf of all the contributing authors, I’d like again to express our sincere appreciation of your letter and the constructive comments concerning our manuscript. We hope the reviesed manuscript meet the high standards of the journal and look forward to hearing a positive response from you.

Best regards,

Dr. Zhihui WangProfessor of Pomology

Sichuan Agricultural University, China

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

At the manuscript "Rootstock Effects on Anthocyanin Accumulation and Associated Biosynthetic Gene Expression and Enzyme Activity of  ‘Tarocco’ Blood Orange (Citrus Sinensis L. Osbeck) during Fruit Development and Ripening"the authors present a biochemical analysis and especially of the anthocyanin biosynthesis content in blood-oranges, in order to compare different cultivars at different stages of plant development.

In general, the article is well written, however it is necessary to clarify some ideas that sound confusing to the reader and also to intensify the motivation of the work. Some parts of the manuscript are like an extensive list of reactions, which can be reduced and go straight to the point that is the focus of the study.

Some critical points:

Lines 65 to 69: The authors did not show a correlation of this information with their main focus. It is not clear how these species connect with the tarocco orange.

Lines 83 to 93: This sentence is quite unnecessary here. The authors can be more direct here.

Lines 104 to 109: Here is not clear if this work will help future studies in this area, or if the authors already get the information enough to perform these speculations.

Line 125: Specifically, wich parts of the plant was used? Was the epicarp and mesocarp? Please use the correct words.

Line 159: which parameters were used?

Line 250: For this reviewer, the use of the words skin and flesh is not scientific. A better option is epicarp and mesocarp.

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewers,

We sincerely thank you and the reviewers for valuable comments and suggesionts, which were of great help in improving our manuscript (Manuscript ID: agriculture-1597512). All authors have carefully considered these comments and tried our best to address every one of them. Below we provide the point-to-point responses to the comments. The revised portions are marked in red in the paper.

On behalf of all the contributing authors, I’d like again to express our sincere appreciation of your letter and the constructive comments concerning our manuscript. We hope the reviesed manuscript meet the high standards of the journal and look forward to hearing a positive response from you.

Best regards,

Dr. Zhihui WangProfessor of Pomology

Sichuan Agricultural University, China

Author Response File: Author Response.docx