Rice Responses to the Stem Borer Diatraea saccharalis (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) by Infrared-Thermal Imaging: Implications for Field Management

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Rice responses to the stem borer Diatraea saccharalis (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) by infrared-thermal imaging: Implications for field management has been reviewed

 

1.      I recommend including the abstract, general description of methods, treatments, or evaluations, main results expressed with values and statistical significance, and the conclusion of the evaluation or analysis of the experimental results.

2. Authors need to rewrite about more information about Diatraea saccharalis and damage loss that cause on percentage of crop loss due to pest.

3. Please add the hypothesis at the end of introduction.

4. Please mention the line names of rice in line 70.

5. The paper is badly written and this paper MUST BE revised by a native speaking person before publication.

6. The discussion is unsuitable to publish, you must focus on your work by ‎discussing your results step by step and some of citations remove them from ‎discussion is suitable to mention in section of introduction.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Moderate editing of English language required.

Author Response

Comment 1. I recommend including the abstract, general description of methods, treatments, or evaluations, main results expressed with values and statistical significance, and the conclusion of the evaluation or analysis of the experimental results.

Response 1. Thank you for pointing this out. We have improved the abstract by including details on response variables and methods used for data analysis.

Comment 2. Authors need to rewrite about more information about Diatraea saccharalis and damage loss that cause on percentage of crop loss due to pest.

Response 2. As this is one major pest in rice crops, authors agreed that information on damage and yield loss is widely available in literature, and being so, the first paragraph of our Introduction summarizes well how the insect causes damage.

Comment 3. Please add the hypothesis at the end of introduction.

Response 3. Done!

Comment 4. Please mention the line names of rice in line 70.

Response 4. Done!

Comment 5. The paper is badly written and this paper MUST BE revised by a native speaking person before publication.

Response 5. The manuscript has passed through English revision.

Comment 6. The discussion is unsuitable to publish, you must focus on your work by ‎discussing your results step by step and some of citations remove them from ‎discussion is suitable to mention in section of introduction.

Response 6. Thank you for this suggestion. It is not clear to authors what citations should be removed and exactly which parts of discussion should be rewritten. Nonetheless, we have restructured the first paragraph of Discussion to make it cleared in terms of our results. Also, we ensure that each paragraph of Discussion approaches our main Results.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The general topic of the paper is of great interest, and the methods seem sound for evaluating temperature responses of rice varieties to different infestation levels by Diatraea saccharalis.  A key limitation for practical implementation of the method is the lack of specificity of temperature responses -- these can be associated with insect infestation as well as environmental factors that alter water relations. The authors mention this point which I think is crucial in evaluating whether or not the methodology examined here can find use in practical pest management.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The quality of writing is generally fine throughout the manuscript, but I do think the clarity would be improved by better stylistic consistency. Specifically, the authors use a serial comment (comma at the last item in a list - e.g. a, b, and c) sometimes but others times omit the comma.

Author Response

Comment 1. The general topic of the paper is of great interest, and the methods seem sound for evaluating temperature responses of rice varieties to different infestation levels by Diatraea saccharalis.  A key limitation for practical implementation of the method is the lack of specificity of temperature responses -- these can be associated with insect infestation as well as environmental factors that alter water relations. The authors mention this point which I think is crucial in evaluating whether or not the methodology examined here can find use in practical pest management.

Response 1. Thank you for such evaluation. Indeed this (leaf temperature measurement) is a crucial point in this kind of research. We highlighted in the manuscript that the air temperature should be monitored as a way to control variations caused by biotic stresses. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that in our study the plants were kept in a protection cage, which can also be adapted to field conditions studies on IPM.

Comment 2. The quality of writing is generally fine throughout the manuscript, but I do think the clarity would be improved by better stylistic consistency. Specifically, the authors use a serial comment (comma at the last item in a list - e.g. a, b, and c) sometimes but others times omit the comma.

Response 2. Thank you. The manuscript has passed through English revision.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

This manuscript is addressing a very interesting and needed topic which is a non-invasive method for early detecting the presence of the stem borer in rice plants. The experiment is well-designed and results are important, but there are some issues that might reduce the impact of the paper. First of all, I found the title a little confusing. Based on it, I was expecting a paper about how the infrared-thermal application would affect rice and the stem borer, but it is actually about detection. Please revise it, and the objectives too. Also, I could not find the figures, so the results are somewhat difficult to understand. Furthermore, the way the manuscript is organized is a bit odd, with Materials and Methods section being at the end of the document instead of at its usual place (i.e., right before the results).

As I said before, the results are important, but I think they need to be discussed a little more. For instance, how effective could be this method to detect damaged plants when plants are adjacent one another (distances between plants in the experiment were not mentioned, by the way) as they usually are in rice plantations? And how could it differentiate between damage caused by the stem borer and other types of damages? Also, as far as I understand, the proportions of lived caterpillars were not different between the two cultivars, but the way the resistant variety responds to that occurrence was. Is that correct? Therefore, you need to discuss the implications of this limitation (for instance, a resistant variety where infestation is not detected can be a focus of infestation itself).

Other minor comments are explained next.

Several commas are missing after parentheses in lines 64-67.

Lines 78-79: “… which means are significantly different…”. I do not understand what are you trying to say.

Line 86: Please write the species correctly.

Lines 90-91: “Although plants not infested with IR 40 had higher leaf temperatures…”. This makes no sense, the IR 40 is the cultivar, so it can not infest.

- In figure 2, the increase in the first graph is not that evident until the last treatment (i.e., 10 caterpillars), and even the decrease in the second one is only subtle. I suggest that the authors look for a statistical analysis to evaluate that trend. - I do not understand the figure 3. What is the difference between 3A and 3B? What are the scales at the right representing?

Author Response

Comment 1. This manuscript is addressing a very interesting and needed topic which is a non-invasive method for early detecting the presence of the stem borer in rice plants. The experiment is well-designed and results are important, but there are some issues that might reduce the impact of the paper. First of all, I found the title a little confusing. Based on it, I was expecting a paper about how the infrared-thermal application would affect rice and the stem borer, but it is actually about detection. Please revise it, and the objectives too. Also, I could not find the figures, so the results are somewhat difficult to understand. Furthermore, the way the manuscript is organized is a bit odd, with Materials and Methods section being at the end of the document instead of at its usual place (i.e., right before the results).

Response 1. Thank you for this thoghtful revision. In the title, the term imaging is used for referring to detection. About the sections (Results before Methods): authors followed the journal's instructions.

Comment 2. As I said before, the results are important, but I think they need to be discussed a little more. For instance, how effective could be this method to detect damaged plants when plants are adjacent one another (distances between plants in the experiment were not mentioned, by the way) as they usually are in rice plantations? And how could it differentiate between damage caused by the stem borer and other types of damages? Also, as far as I understand, the proportions of lived caterpillars were not different between the two cultivars, but the way the resistant variety responds to that occurrence was. Is that correct? Therefore, you need to discuss the implications of this limitation (for instance, a resistant variety where infestation is not detected can be a focus of infestation itself).

Response 2. Plants were cultuvated in pots, and each pot was protected by a cage with a voil cover. This also answer the question about how the damage caused by the stem bored could by isolated from other types of biotic or abiotic stresses. About resistance: yes, the number of caterpillars was the same for the two cultivars. The authors could not fully understand the suggestion of discussing the implications -  if infestation is not detected, there would not be a focus of infestation (if that is what was the question).

Comment 3. Other minor comments are explained next.

Several commas are missing after parentheses in lines 64-67.

Response 3. Thank you for such a careful revision. Fixed!

Comment 4. Lines 78-79: “… which means are significantly different…”. I do not understand what are you trying to say.

Response 4. Perhaps because you could not access the figures. In any case, Figure 2 shows that the means of cultivars for the variable "proportion of healthy stems" are significantly different, because the 95% confidence intervals are not overlapping. 

Comment 5. Line 86: Please write the species correctly.

Response 5. Fixed. Thank you.

Comment 6. Lines 90-91: “Although plants not infested with IR 40 had higher leaf temperatures…”. This makes no sense, the IR 40 is the cultivar, so it can not infest.

Response 6. Indeed, it was a mistake. Thank you for pointing this out. Sentence reworded.

Comment 7. - In figure 2, the increase in the first graph is not that evident until the last treatment (i.e., 10 caterpillars), and even the decrease in the second one is only subtle. I suggest that the authors look for a statistical analysis to evaluate that trend.

Response 7. Our results were based on 95% confidence intervals. Indeed, the treatment with 10 caterpillars indicates significant increase on the average of live caterpillars (first graph). The second graph shows similar results, with non-overlapping confidence intervals.

Comment 8. - I do not understand the figure 3. What is the difference between 3A and 3B? What are the scales at the right representing?

Response 8. That information in Fig. 3 caption: "(A) the surface temperature (ºC) of leaves and (B) the difference 363 between air and leaf surface temperature...".

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors addressed the comments and I recommended to accept this manuscript for publication

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language required.

Author Response

Comment 1. The authors addressed the comments and I recommended to accept this manuscript for publication

Response 1. Thank you very much.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The revisions in this version address my comments from review, and I think this version is ready for publication.

Author Response

Comment 1. The revisions in this version address my comments from review, and I think this version is ready for publication.

Response 1. Thank you for the careful revision that helped us to improve the paper.