Determining Moisture Content of Basil Using Handheld Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript describes an operative methodology to monitor the watering state of foliage of a basil crop grown in protected conditions with an handheld device.  It is well written and adequately addressing Horticulturae readers, but a more in-deep investigation of applications of NIR spectroscopy in horticulture is strongly suggested. Results should be better described in terms of generalisation to other growing conditions/stages.
Other suggestioons are reported hereafter:

Introduction
L54 - why NIR emerged - briefly pros & cons ?
L67 - Which crops similar to basil ?
L81 - What do you mean by 'subtle' ?
L82 - 'practical application' .. which is the protocol you have in mind ? (may be in conclusion)
L88 - plan of paper is missing here
L88-90 - better in conclusion

M&M
L94 - please, briefly describe figure
L102-103 - please describe recipe, fert-irrigation method, schedule, etc
L111 - which stage of growing, which leaves af a plant have been selected ?
L120 - briefly describe the peculiarities of such device (incl. effect of external disturbances, how human operation affect measures,..)
PLS,MSC,SNV,SG,GA,VIP - please give a brief description of such methods

Results
L170 - consider to move some stuff in M&M
L198 - some data on computing time could be useful

References
Please review
Incomplete 15,20,27

Comments on the Quality of English Language

nothing relevant

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 The manuscript brings a novel and relevant approach to the vegetable farming, especially regarding the management and monitoring of water status in indoor farming, which is the evaluation of the accuracy of leaf moisture content prediction using data obtained by handheld NIR spectroscopy. The quality of the research carried out and the writing of the manuscript is good, however, some important aspects of the methodology need to be elucidated. Additionally, the Discussion needs more depth to clarify the importance and applicability of the approach used. Below are my considerations:

 

Introduction:

- Please provide the hypotheses of the study in the Introduction and Abstract

 Line 78: There are two adverbs with the same meaning “Moreover, Furthermore...”

Material and Methods :

- What is the pixel-to-pixel interval and spectral bandwidth of the sensor used? This information needs to be described in the methodology, along with the sensor description

- Based on the sensor's pixel interval, what is the total number of spectral variables obtained by the sensor? Were the entire set of variables used as input variables in the models? This information needs to be provided in the text so that the reader can understand the size of the dataset considering the input variables (spectral readings) used.

-  How many samples, considering different leaf moisture contents x number of readings on each leaf, were taken into account in the datasets? What number of input variables were used (as per previous comment)? The size of the raw dataset and after treatments needs to be clarified in the text.

- Please provide more information about the data treatment approaches. A brief description and justification of the choice of these methods should be provided, not just citing the references of the approaches.

- Why did the authors choose the Genetic Algorithm for the selection of spectral variables?

Results and Discussion:

- This section lacks insights into the novelty of the study and the practical implications of the results obtained. Clarifying questions such as "what this research brings that is similar or different to other studies addressing the use of spectroscopy for leaf moisture determination", and "how the findings contribute to monitoring process of the crop and to improving its production chain" is crucial to understanding the importance of the study. Some of these insights are in the Conclusions, but they should be highlighted and argued on the basis of the current literature in the Discussion section

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Why have you selected the 1112-1193nm region? it is not properly a region selective to water. 

By looking at Figure 5, do you think you have provided a good prediction? 

 NIR is one of the most capable techniques for quantifying water/moisture  in any source, the number of LV's seems excessive to me. Do you think if you increase the LV's you have a more robust model despite the better predictions?

Have you tried iPLS? 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have improved the manuscript, but the items I told to improve in the last revision are still here