Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Some comments need to be taken into account as follows;

 Title: Line 3 add scientific name of Sesame

 Abstrcat should be in only one paragraph and not split.

 Introduction section:

In line 77: You should add all the molecular markers used in general and those used more frequently specially SSR's as you will use it in your experiments add those used in other vegetable crops and more recent references.

The lines 77-88: this should be better in discussion section. Put instead of this paragraph the molecular markers used in sesame and in several other crops, and why you choose SSR's among them.

Material & methods section:

Line 98: you should add the total number you have: " this study comprised 183 lines: 101 cultivated "...etc

line 99: in supplementary might be better as it is a large Table

Line 107: Add your experimental design you used in the field. Add data regarding the cycle of this crop (when you made the sowing and the harvesting etc...)

Add also, environmental data of this field and GPS data of your experimental station

Line 112: Add picture of an overview of your lines in the field if you have any

Line 115: Please add the following: seedlings which stage? 2 trues leaves or what? and how many grams of fresh leaves did you used for DNA extraction,

Results section

Line 172: "cultivars" sometimes you use lines and sometimes you use cultivars, you should be concise in all the text.

Line 176: “drought resistance, tolerance to waterlogging, and disease resistance” You did not mention this in Material and methods section, so add it giving information how you evaluate these parameters of drought and disease resistance and specify which disease.

Figure 1: you should enhance the quality, it is not at all clear

Lines 189-196: we can’t see that in this Figure 1, so you have to enhance the quality to be readable.

Lines 189-196:  I suggest to add a Table with the variation among the 3 grps of lines, for the different parameters. So you have to present data as a mean of each parameter and each cultivars type (I mean for the 101 cultivars, the 60 Chinese landraces and the 20 remaining ones). And giving the Min, Max, Mean and SD values for each trait and each grp of lines.

Figure 4: you should enhance the quality of this figure. Add more precision in the Title adding the method you used to determine this tree and how many groups were formed

Figure 5: in the title add that "the PCA plot was divided into four areas, I, II, III, and IV) and enhance the quality of this figure

Discussion section

Line 357: the reference 16 of Soybean is old, replace it with a recent reference or/and add more crops with recent references such melon (Chikh-Rouhou et al. 2021)

Chikh-Rouhou, H.; Mezghani, N.; Mnasri, S.; Mezghani, N.; Garcés-Claver, A. Assessing the Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of a Tunisian Melon (Cucumis melo L.) Collection Using Phenotypic Traits and SSR Molecular Markers. Agronomy 2021, 11, 1121. https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11061121

Line 357: ‘crops’ instead of ‘varieties’

Conclusion section

It seems an abstract and not a conclusion, so you should rewrite it. Highlight the major findings, compared to phenotypic and molecular markers to the future scope.

Reference section

Verify to be uniform and following the journal guidelines

Reference 11: should be Plants. 2021; 10 : 656.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx