Survey of Viruses Infecting Tomato, Cucumber and Mung Bean in Tajikistan

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript by Chan et al. entitled: "Predominant viruses infecting tomato, cucumber and mung-bean in Tajikistan" describes the identification of viruses infecting cucumber mungbean and tomatoes in Tajikistan. Many of the tested plants showed mixed infections. Unique to the tested area viruses transmitted by aphids infected the crops. The information reported in the manuscript regarding the infecting viruses and aphid transmission is important for disease management by their suggested breeding with resistant crops and targeting aphids to control the disease.

Comments to authors:

1. The authors did not perform Koch tests and NGS was not done so any conclusions regarding a correlation between symptoms and the infecting viruses cannot be drawn.
2. Most of the identified viruses were detected by a candidate approach so the author should avoid conclusions regarding "major" virus or "main" virus or "prevalent" virus disease as well as "CMV alone" because these adjectives need to be confirmed by NGS and virome analyses as well as targeted infections with single or mixed viruses.
3. The authors have used universal (general) primer sets for various viruses and it would be informative if the gels (e.g. universal potyvirus) were presented in order to assess number of amplicons that can be indicative of involvement of additional viruses.
4. In addition to the universal primers that do not always work especially in virus mixed infections, it would be important to recheck all DNA samples extracted from the tomato plants with specific primers for TYLCV.
5. Regarding the Criniviruses that are well known for their low titer. It could be important to check the RNA from Mung bean for lettuce chlorosis virus (LCV) using specific primers.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article “Predominant viruses infecting tomato, cucumber and mungbean in Tajikistan” investigate the viruses infecting three vegetable crops in Tajikistan. The significance is enough. However, there are some issues that I am concerned about.

1. The importance of the manuscript is not fully stated.

2. The authors obtained the data from just one year. In my opinion, it is inappropriate to say that they are the predominant viruses infecting the three crops, since the environmental conditions may change a lot.

3. The authors select a pair of primers to verify the virus. I think it is not convincing, since viruses have high similarity in sequence. And how about the results from RT-PCR and PCR?

4. The references is too little to favor the points from the authors.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have made the necessary corrections and the article can be accepted for publication in the current version

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have solved most of the questions that I am concerned.