Morpho-Agronomic Characterization, Sample Size, and Plot Size for the Evaluation of Capsicum chinense Genotypes
, Ricardo Lopes 2, Carlos Meneses 3, Magno Sávio Ferreira Valente 4, Cibele Chalita Martins 5, Santiago Ferreyra Ramos 6, Izamara Oliveira 3, Therezinha de Jesus Pinto Fraxe 1, Lucifrancy Costa 1 and Maria Teresa Gomes Lopes 1,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Authors evaluated characteristics of Capsicum chinense landraces as a tool to find optimal procedure for landraces selection.
ABSTRACT:
In the manuscript authors mixed terms landraces-genotypes, it should be unified through the text.
Maybe you should state what kind of improvementis expected of ypur selection process.
INTRODUCTION:
Of the domesticated South American peppers, Capsicum chinense Jacq. primarily found in Brazil, is commonly known as “pimenta-de-cheiro” (smell pepper – common name in English and Spanish “Habanero”) as it is aromatic it is a species widely appreciated and consumed………….
This not proper English, all manuscript should be check by native speaker or scientific editor.
Otherwise, it provides sufficient information about topic.
MATERIALS:
Line 93: maybe to use local farmers- not family farming
Line 117: please put cultivation treatmants
Line 120: „Latossolo Amarelo, distrófico“ - please put international classification, and give some main soil traits
Line 124: what is PRNT 80%, if is commercial product, you should put producer and product characteristics
Line 127: it seems too much to apply 150 g of NPK per plant, is this correct?; what is product Yogen 2?
RESULTS:
Figure 2 and 3: from both of thiese analyses we can not clarify which traits are most important to divide different genotypes. Maybe PCA analysis can give that kind of answer?
Table 2: it seems the number for TFW of genotype MAN-I lapsus calami
Conclusions
Line 460: again Landraces , why with capital letters
Manuscript is properly organized and have enough data, but need English check before publication.
Author Response
Reply to Reviewer:
The constructive criticisms of referees certainly contributed to the improvement of the document. We attended most of the points raised by the reviewers and modified others.
We now believe that our findings are of potential importance for comprehension of this theme and should be of interest to the readership of the Horticulturae (MDPI). In addition, a native (Gregory P Burke, MBA) in the English language extensive revised the manuscript.
We answered all the suggestions of the reviewers that are marked in the article, below there are some necessary clarifications.
In order to standardize the terms as suggested by a reviewer, we removed landraces and opted for “genotypes”.
Regarding the term Habanero, we cannot use it because “scented peppers” we check and are different from Habanero. Habanero in Brazil are very pungent peppers. The varieties of “pimenta-de-cheiro” Capsicum chinense are already published in literature and described by other authors, for example, the “pimenta de cheiro” is recognized in an article by the MDPI (https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/9/3/141/htm#B21-agronomy-09-00141). We are not going to translate the term into English, and we will keep it in Portuguese consistent with the terminology in that article. “pimenta-de-cheiro” Capsicum chinense are aromatic, but we are not going to translate the term. The ones we present in our study are aromatic and sweet.
In reference to the abstract, we chose not to enter more information because it would exceed the character limit.
We have included the PCA Analysis to discuss the characteristics commented on by the two authors.
We didn't add PCA table for result or other tables, because we thought the number of tables would be excessive. We only described the PCA in a Result and Discussion segment. The PCA results showed among the variables analyzed, those with the most significance greater than 5% are FTSh (6.32%), MFC (7.41%), FSH (10.51%), CCS (11.56%) and IFC (49.49%).
In reference to the introduction...
... “To form a base population for the development of sweet and aromatic “pimenta-de-cheiro”, Embrapa Amazônia Ocidental (Amazonas, Brazil) collected C. chinense accessions from several locations in the northern region of the country. The genotypes were subjected to preliminary selection for the elimination of those with pungency...”
The paragraph is not from this present work. It refers to what was done in a previous breeding program before our research. For this reason, it was necessary that we cite in the introduction.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript describes morphological characterization and estimation of sample size and plot size of samples. The study is well organized and provides a complete picture of the conducted research, and the collected data corresponds to the purpose of the study. It will provide insight and methodological recommendations in the study of Capsicum genetic resources and the selection of breeding material.
The manuscript is well prepared, however, some things would further improve its quality (see detailed comments in the manuscript file).
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Reply to Reviewer:
The constructive criticisms of referees certainly contributed to the improvement of the document. We attended most of the points raised by the reviewers and modified others.
We now believe that our findings are of potential importance for comprehension of this theme and should be of interest to the readership of the Horticulturae (MDPI). In addition, a native (Gregory P Burke, MBA) in the English language extensive revised the manuscript.
We answered all the suggestions of the reviewers that are marked in the article, below there are some necessary clarifications.
In order to standardize the terms as suggested by a reviewer, we removed landraces and opted for “genotypes”.
Regarding the term Habanero, we cannot use it because “scented peppers” we check and are different from Habanero. Habanero in Brazil are very pungent peppers. The varieties of “pimenta-de-cheiro” Capsicum chinense are already published in literature and described by other authors, for example, the “pimenta de cheiro” is recognized in an article by the MDPI (https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/9/3/141/htm#B21-agronomy-09-00141). We are not going to translate the term into English, and we will keep it in Portuguese consistent with the terminology in that article. “pimenta-de-cheiro” Capsicum chinense are aromatic, but we are not going to translate the term. The ones we present in our study are aromatic and sweet.
In reference to the abstract, we chose not to enter more information because it would exceed the character limit.
We have included the PCA Analysis to discuss the characteristics commented on by the two authors.
We didn't add PCA table for result or other tables, because we thought the number of tables would be excessive. We only described the PCA in a Result and Discussion segment. The PCA results showed among the variables analyzed, those with the most significance greater than 5% are FTSh (6.32%), MFC (7.41%), FSH (10.51%), CCS (11.56%) and IFC (49.49%).
In reference to the introduction...
... “To form a base population for the development of sweet and aromatic “pimenta-de-cheiro”, Embrapa Amazônia Ocidental (Amazonas, Brazil) collected C. chinense accessions from several locations in the northern region of the country. The genotypes were subjected to preliminary selection for the elimination of those with pungency...”
The paragraph is not from this present work. It refers to what was done in a previous breeding program before our research. For this reason, it was necessary that we cite in the introduction.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
