Peer Review History
Original SubmissionSeptember 30, 2019 |
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PONE-D-19-27444 Cultivar-specific nutritional status of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) crops PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Parent, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Feb 10 2020 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Paul Esker Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments: This paper presents a machine learning approach to modeling tuber yields as a function of foliar ionomes. The concept is interesting and the database extensive considering time and cultivar diversity. Overall, the paper does add something new to the literature, but as indicated by the primary reviewer, revisions are required before the article is ready for publication. I would like to apologize for the delay in returning this review since there were challenges with finding reviewers, as well as having several situations where the reviewer was released from finalizing the review due to non-response. Nonetheless, both the primary reviewer and I are in agreement regarding areas for improvement for this manuscript. In my case, I was confused somewhat by the description of how trials were selected, and what the yield range was since in the methods, trials that had less than 28 Mg ha-1 were dropped from inclusion, yet the low yielding group (high versus low) averaged 24.8 Mg ha-1. I assume this means that within the selected trials, there were still many low-yielding cultivars, correct? Also, the sample sizes by cultivar were quite variable and in some cases, it appeared that there were very few of one class or the other when looking at the supplementary material. As indicated by Reviewer 1, I think this is important to provide further details or context since it may partially explain the high variation in fit by cultivar - this is not necessarily addressed well in the discussion. Some more specific observations include: Lines 229-231: Confusing statement Line 269 (and in other statements), the citation style was rather odd, with a double mention of the author. Lines 300-304: Confused with pre-selection procedure - also ties in to the question that Reviewer 1 had for lines 305-307. Lines 319-323: Seems like a transition is missing to the connect the different thoughts. Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements: 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at http://www.plosone.org/attachments/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.plosone.org/attachments/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement: "ZC is partly funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (CRDPJ 385199-09 and DG-2254), the Quebec Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (IA216581), Centre SEVE, Patate Dolbec Inc., Groupe Gosselin FG, Agriparmentier Inc., Ferme Daniel Bolduc Inc., Patate Laurentienne, Ferme Bergeron-Niquet, and Patates Lac-St-Jean. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." a. Please provide an amended statement that declares *all* the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now. Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement. b. Please include your amended Funding Statement within your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. Thank you for stating the following in the Competing Interests section: 'The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.' We note that you received funding from commercial sources: Patate Dolbec Inc., Groupe Gosselin FG, Agriparmentier Inc., Ferme Daniel Bolduc Inc. a. 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The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ********** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ********** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ********** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: In lines 305-307, the authors state that the sample size is small and results should be carefully interpreted. It would be misleading to the reader to indicate any relationship or conclusions at this stage until further investigation/research is done to explore such implications from this data. Line 25-26, “The scarcity of data, in particular for new cultivars, constrains to group cultivars into maturity groups.” Awkward sentence – consider revision. Line 51 “In particular, foliar gene expression….” Incomplete sentence- revise grammar. Line 109, Can the maturity classes be further described by their range of days from planting to maturity? Line 113-114, If I understand the protocol correctly, this leaf sampling was taken at different times throughout the growing season due to the differences in maturity of the potato cultivars? Line 115-116, “ground to less than 1mm” what does that mean exactly? The plant material was ground to less than 1mm particle diameter? Just curious. Line 265-266, “…information additional to maturity grouping is needed to assess nutrient requirements of potato cultivars.” Can you provide some additional considerations and why? Are they practical? Line 278-280, The paragraph starts with describing the variation in cultivars and foliar nutrient profiles and would help if there’s more of a transition in explaining to the reader how this variation could be explained through the clustering process. Sentence 278-280 is a stark transition in thought. Consider the additional of another sentence to guide the reader. Line 290, could the different methodology of quantifying P (colorimetry/ICP) have contributed to the insignificance of its content in predicting tuber yield classes? Lines 305-307, Expand on why the predictive accuracy for some cultivars were very high while others were not. Would these potential factors need to be considered in future yield prediction models? Lines 367-369, could the perturbation vector of leaf compositional space assist with correcting for in-season nutrient imbalances (per cultivar) to improve yield potential? Conclusion section – This section needs further expansion and discussion. What are the implications of the study on potato fertility and management? What about future directions and next steps? Does this research provide a positive direction in precision potato production in Canada? Does this mean that cultivar-specific nutrition recommendations may need revision or can be more precise in the future? What are the economic implications of this research for the potato industry? Are there any? Why use potato? Has there been significant background research already conducted in this species or has there been cultivar-specific fertility variability that has led to the investigations with potato? Has there been economic impact of varied fertility regimes on potato cultivars that more precise fertility recommendations based on this model could address? Could the dataset have been more robust if collected from other geographical sites? Would it be possible to do some similar analyses with select potato cultivars grown in very controlled conditions and compare these results also to the analyses here? ********** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. 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Revision 1 |
Cultivar-specific nutritional status of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) crops PONE-D-19-27444R1 Dear Dr. Parent, We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication. Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. With kind regards, Paul Esker Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Thank you for taking the time and energy to consider the reviewer comments. The manuscript reads very well and I am satisfied that it can be moved along for publication. Reviewers' comments: None required. |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-19-27444R1 Cultivar-specific nutritional status of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) crops Dear Dr. Parent: I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. For any other questions or concerns, please email plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE. With kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Paul Esker Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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