Comprehensive Evaluation and Screening for Salt Tolerance Germplasms at Seedling Stage in Eggplant

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I am sendig a file that show some small points to be presented to the authors. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review of horticulturae-3656024

 Comprehensive Evaluation and Screening for Salt-Tolerance  Germplasm at Seedling Stage in Eggplant

Summary

This paper describes greenhouse screening of eggplant genotypes for salinity tolerance, following a preliminary concentration experiment to determine the concentration to use in the main study.

General concept comments

The main question addressed is whether it is possible to screen eggplant genotypes for salt tolerance at an early stage of development. This topic is appropriate for this journal.

Although the experiments appear to have generally been conducted satisfactorily, it is not clear why the preliminary study to determine the NaCl concentration to use in the main study is conducted at an earlier leaf stage (two-leaf) to the leaf stage (four-five) used in the main study. The Discussion should consider the validity of this, how it may possibly limit the conclusions and whether further work on tolerance at different stages is needed.

The figures, tables and references are appropriate.

Specific comments

Line 109 More details of the growing conditions are needed so that another researcher could repeat the work. The dates of the experiment, location and any information on the environment should be given. The growing substrate should be stated.

Lines 122-124 This indicates that several concentrations were used in the main study, but Lines 102 and 168 contradict this and indicate that only 200 mmol/L NaCl used. Please make clear if only one concentration is used.

Line 163 -169 This section is confusing and needs rewriting. It starts with ‘Following 15 days exposure to 200 mmol/L NaCl…’,  but Fig. 1 with the results shows a range of concentrations. 

Line 231 In this Discussion section, there needs to be an explanation of why different leaf stages were used in the preliminary and main studies. The Introduction mentions the importance of variation in salinity tolerance with stage so it needs an explanation of why this was not taken into account and the same stage used for both preliminary and main studies? A discussion is needed of how this difference may limit the validity of the conclusions and whether further work testing different stages is needed.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have amended the paper satisfactorily to address reviewer concerns. I recommend acceptance.