Effects of Vermicompost on Quality and Physiological Parameters of Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) Seedlings and Plant Productivity
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
I added 132 comments and suggestions to your manuscript in order to help you to improve it for publication. Please read the comments carefully and make corrections where needed.
I noticed that your english writing style is very confusing sometimes. Please consider editing by a native speaker. However, I think that your investigation is very well executed and the methods that you used fit to the research question that you wanted to answer in the beginning. Furhtermore, the discussion in particular is very well written and you present and relate your results to several other studies.
Kind regards,
the Reviewer
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
The authors of the paper are grateful for the article review and positive comments. We agree with your comments and have taken them into account and made corrections.
Please see the attachment.
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript entitled “Effects of vermicompost on quality and physiological parameters of cucumber seedlings and plant productivity” by Jankauskienė et al. deals with determining the effect of peat-vermicompost substrates on cucumber seedling quality and crop yield. After a careful review, I found this work interesting and acceptable for publication in the Horticulturae journal after major changes. My utmost concern is regarding the appropriate replication of results. I have the following specific comments which need to be addressed in the revised version:
1. Too much use of dash (-) in the manuscript text, I suggest writing it as a simple language. Include the scientific name of cucumber in title and methods. Write variety name in methods also.
2. The abstract should include major numerical results, currently, no such data is given.
3. The first paragraph of the introduction is too long. Also, it includes the research problem which is later merged with the need and significance of work. I suggest splitting it into two paragraphs and adjusting the flow of reading accordingly.
4. Line 68: Hypothesis must be extended while linking the previously written contents.
5. Provide geocoordinate information on the study site.
6. The greenhouse has an edge effect, how it was mitigated?
7. References for NDVI and PRI calculations are a must.
8. Results in all tables lack replication. At least three values should be provided as mean followed by SD. Also, it is necessary to conduct any test of significance with the appropriate post-hoc test.
9. Fig 2 and others: Change the legends of the x-axis (1,2,3..) to treatment names.
10. PCA scatterplot lacks directional loading. Are data factorable?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
The authors of the paper are grateful for the article review and positive comments. We agree with your comments and have taken them into account and made corrections.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have adequately responded to my comments and implemented the corrections in the revised manuscript. I recommend acceptance in current form.
