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Peer-Review Record

Impact of Various Salinity Levels and Fusarium oxysporum as Stress Factors on the Morpho-Physiological and Yield Attributes of Onion

Horticulturae 2023, 9(7), 786; https://doi.org/10.3390/horticulturae9070786

by Muhammad Zeeshan Mansha^1,2, Hafiz Muhammad Aatif^1,2,*, Kamran Ikram³

, Ch. Muhammad Shahid Hanif^2,4, Abdul Sattar^2,5,*, Rubab Iqbal⁶, Qamar uz Zaman⁷

, Salem Mesfir Al-Qahtani⁸

, Nadi Awad Al-Harbi⁸

, Wael A. Omar⁹ and Mohamed F. M. Ibrahim¹⁰

Reviewer 1:

Abazar Ghorbani

Reviewer 2:

Fasih Ullah Haider

Reviewer 3:

Muhammad Siddique Afridi

Horticulturae 2023, 9(7), 786; https://doi.org/10.3390/horticulturae9070786

Submission received: 9 May 2023 / Revised: 1 July 2023 / Accepted: 5 July 2023 / Published: 10 July 2023

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Studies in Abiotic Stress Response Mechanism of Horticultural Plants)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this research, the effects of different levels of salinity and pathogenic fungi on onion plants have been investigated. The article is well structured to some extent. The important issue is why is this issue being investigated? The importance of doing this must be explained well in the introduction. The following points must be well addressed to prepare the paper for acceptance.

- It is necessary to describe the objectives and innovation of the work in the last paragraph in the introduction section.

- Specify the number of repetitions for each attribute in M&M section.

- L80: What is ME? please write in full.

- In M&M, it was mentioned that different salts were used to create the saline solution, while in the results, only one graph for one solution (it is not clear which solution) is displayed. Please specify how many solutions were prepared and if the effects of all solutions were checked, why only one effect of one solution was added in fig.

- L240: add this ref.

Pan, C., Yang, K., Erhunmwunsee, F., Li, Y., Liu, M., Pan, S., Yang, D., Lu, G., Ma, D., Tian, J. (2023). Inhibitory effect of cinnamaldehyde on Fusarium solani and its application in postharvest preservation of sweet potato. Food Chemistry, 408, 135213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2022.135213

- L261: add this ref:

Wang, L., Li, X., Gao, F., Liu, Y., Lang, S., Wang, C., Zhang, D. (2023). Effect of ultrasound combined with exogenous GABA treatment on polyphenolic metabolites and antioxidant activity of mung bean during germination. Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, 94, 106311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ultsonch.2023.106311

- Although the article is well written, it is necessary to check the article completely by the authors so that the writing errors are completely removed.

Although the article is well written, it is necessary to check the article completely by the authors so that the writing errors are completely removed.

Author Response

RESPONSE TO REVIEWER #1:

Reviewer #1: It is necessary to describe the objectives and innovation of the work in the last paragraph in the introduction section.

Response: Added as suggested by the reviewer in the last paragraph of introduction section.

Reviewer #1: Specify the number of repetitions for each attribute in M&M section.

Response: Added as suggested by the reviewer in the statistical analysis under M&M section.

Reviewer #1: What is ME? please write in full.

Response: Added as suggested by the reviewer in the M&M section.

Reviewer #1: In M&M, it was mentioned that different salts were used to create the saline solution, while in the results, only one graph for one solution (it is not clear which solution) is displayed. Please specify how many solutions were prepared and if the effects of all solutions were checked, why only one effect of one solution was added in fig.

Response: After successive irrigations of the prepared solution, the salt accumulation in the soil was approached to equilibrium concentration through evaporation by leaving the salt behind in the soil. That’s the reason we added all the ingredients to make saline solution.

We are thankful for investing your precious time and providing meaningful comments on the article. The article has been revised according to the instructions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This research article entitled: “Impact of various salinity levels and Fusarium oxysporum as stress factors on morpho- physiological and yield attributes of onion” investigated the role of Fusarium oxysporum as stress factor of salinity mediated the morpho- physiological and yield attributes in onion crop. The overall contents discussed in this research article are reasonable and sound. However, there are a few suggestions needed to incorporate to improve the quality of this manuscript. I, therefore, suggest major revision for this manuscript.

General comment:

Similar type of experiment has already been done in previous studies (DOI: 10.1007/s12298-018-0570-z) and (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmpp.2021.101602); so authors are advised to improve the novelty of this manuscript.

Specific Comments:

1. In the abstract, please mention treatments of study which are missing.

2. Authors are advised to improve the quality of abstract section, please highlight the scientific value-added to your paper in your abstract. Moreover, abstracts should clearly state the essence of the problem you are addressing, what you did and what you found and recommend.

3. The introduction section is too small and not convincing, in the introduction, you need to connect the state of the art to your paper goals. Please follow the literature review by a clear and concise state of the art analysis. This should clearly show the knowledge gaps identified and link them to your paper goals. Please reason both the novelty and the relevance of your paper goals. Clearly discuss what the previous studies that you are referring to. What are the Research Gaps/Contributions? Please note that the paper may not be considered further without a clear research gap and novelty of the study.

4. The introduction section is abrupt and background information are scattered. It lacks the systematic layering and connectivity between the sentences as well as paragraphs. What were the key objectives of this study? What was the hypothesis of manuscript?

5. In materials and methods statistical section, add some sentences about ANOVA process and level of significance etc.

6. In result section, quality of figures should be uniform (and should be improved further by using graphpad or graphprism) in format, letter font and size should be the same as the remaining manuscript body. Furthermore, data presented in table 2 should be converted into figure.

7. Moreover, authors are advised to add precision correlation and principal component analysis in results section In your discussion section, please link your empirical results with a broader and deeper literature review.

8. One way of improving Discussion is to avoid repetition of results in this part. Discussion is very shallow and needs in depth discussion with the recent literature published. In discussion, there is a lack of mechanistic approach.

9. The conclusion is generic and fails to provide any improvement in the existing knowledge base. The conclusions can still be improved by providing an analysis of where the current work on adsorbents is focused, what are the remaining gaps in literature and where more research should be conducted. It is recommended to use quantitative reasoning comparing with appropriate benchmarks, especially those stemming from previous work. Limitations in the suggested approach should be discussed in the conclusions section. Please add future work as well.

10. The language of this manuscript should be edited by a professional edition.

11. The reference of the article needs to be checked, revised and formatted.

Moderate editing of English language

Author Response

Response to Reviewer #2:

Comment-1: In the abstract, please mention treatments of study which are missing.