Comparison between flaming, mowing and tillage weed control in the vineyard: Effects on plant community, diversity and abundance

Matia Mainardis; Francesco Boscutti; Maria del Mar Rubio Cebolla; Gianfranco Pergher

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0238396

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 17, 2020
1 Jul 2020 Decision Letter - Amparo Lázaro, Editor PONE-D-20-07695 Innovative versus traditional weed control strategies in the vineyard: flaming affects species composition and abundance but not plant diversity PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Boscutti, 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. This manuscript has now been reviewed by two experts. Both reviews agree that the manuscript is well-written and that the approach is interesting, but in their very short review reports they both raised important concerns regarding the title, the focus of the manuscript and the conclusions drawn. I also think that somehow it is not totally clear in the manuscript the novel information that this study brings regarding weed control. Based on this, I would like to give you the opportunity of revising the manuscript taking into account the comments of the reviewers. If you decide to revise the manuscript it will be sent out again to the same or new reviewers for further evaluation. Please provide a detailed response letter with the changes made in the manuscript to take into account the comments. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 15 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Amparo Lázaro, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE 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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. We note that you have included the phrase “data not shown” in your manuscript. Unfortunately, this does not meet our data sharing requirements. PLOS does not permit references to inaccessible data. We require that authors provide all relevant data within the paper, Supporting Information files, or in an acceptable, public repository. Please add a citation to support this phrase or upload the data that corresponds with these findings to a stable repository (such as Figshare or Dryad) and provide and URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers that may be used to access these data. Or, if the data are not a core part of the research being presented in your study, we ask that you remove the phrase that refers to these data. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? 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: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: 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 Reviewer #2: 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 Reviewer #2: 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: The approach is interesting, however there are several serious issues. First of all, practices like mowing are not so...traditional. Secondly, it is almost unbelievable that flaming did not affect plant diversity and number of species. Such finding significantly limits the validity of the data and serious and accurate conclusions cannot be drawn. Therefore, I would modify the title and would not focus on that. Moreover, authors should put considerable more effort to highlight more theri findings and highlight the limited validity of their results and the need of further studies in various soil and climatic conditions. Reviewer #2: Dear authors, the manuscript is well written with clear material and methods but some points should be revised. I'm concerned about some points. - Telling that flaming for weed control is an innovative method: maybe the use of biomass-fueled flaming service is, but not the use o fire for weed control. I strongly recommend title alteration. - Flaming, mowing and tillage are not the best option for weed control, thinking in a herbicide-free environment.For example, think about cover-crops and possibilities of their use in vineyards. Flaming WAS NOT a win-win choice, as stated in manuscript. The authors should discuss that flaming favored species with assexual reproduction and that this can impact weed-crop competition, species persistence in vineyards and others problems related with it. Also, there is a space to comment about weed control method diversification for non-weed selection. - In multivariate statistics, it is appropriated to show in figure, NMDS1 and NMDS2 percentages of coverage. - There is any evaluation of vine plants? There was any effect of fire in plants? ****** 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. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238396.r001
Revision 1
3 Jul 2020 Author Response Editor’s comments This manuscript has now been reviewed by two experts. Both reviews agree that the manuscript is well-written and that the approach is interesting, but in their very short review reports they both raised important concerns regarding the title, the focus of the manuscript and the conclusions drawn. I also think that somehow it is not totally clear in the manuscript the novel information that this study brings regarding weed control. Based on this, I would like to give you the opportunity of revising the manuscript taking into account the comments of the reviewers. If you decide to revise the manuscript it will be sent out again to the same or new reviewers for further evaluation. Please provide a detailed response letter with the changes made in the manuscript to take into account the comments. Response: We thank the editor for the opportunity to reconsider our manuscript. We addressed all the comments that arose during the revision process. In particular we changed the title and paid attention to not overstate about our results while highlighting the novelty of our study. For further details, see the below replies to reviewer’s comments. 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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf Response: The journal’s style was carefully checked and the manuscript was formatted according to the indications. In particular, reference section was modified to fit with the correct style. 2. We note that you have included the phrase “data not shown” in your manuscript. Unfortunately, this does not meet our data sharing requirements. PLOS does not permit references to inaccessible data. We require that authors provide all relevant data within the paper, Supporting Information files, or in an acceptable, public repository. Please add a citation to support this phrase or upload the data that corresponds with these findings to a stable repository (such as Figshare or Dryad) and provide and URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers that may be used to access these data. Or, if the data are not a core part of the research being presented in your study, we ask that you remove the phrase that refers to these data. Response: Thanks to this kind suggestion, the referred sentence was deleted. All data are already available in the supporting information files. Reviewers’ comments Reviewer #1: The approach is interesting, however there are several serious issues. First of all, practices like mowing are not so...traditional. Secondly, it is almost unbelievable that flaming did not affect plant diversity and number of species. Such finding significantly limits the validity of the data and serious and accurate conclusions cannot be drawn. Therefore, I would modify the title and would not focus on that. Moreover, authors should put considerable more effort to highlight more theri findings and highlight the limited validity of their results and the need of further studies in various soil and climatic conditions. Response: The title was completely modified according to this kind observation. The need for further studies in the field was highlighted in the revised manuscript version, together with pointing out that the present obtained results are only a single case-study and consequently cannot be extended to other situations without an in depth experimental campaign. Reviewer #2: Dear authors, the manuscript is well written with clear material and methods but some points should be revised. I'm concerned about some points. - Telling that flaming for weed control is an innovative method: maybe the use of biomass-fueled flaming service is, but not the use o fire for weed control. I strongly recommend title alteration. Response: The title was modified according to this observation and also considering the remarks of other reviewers. - Flaming, mowing and tillage are not the best option for weed control, thinking in a herbicide-free environment. For example, think about cover-crops and possibilities of their use in vineyards. Flaming WAS NOT a win-win choice, as stated in manuscript. The authors should discuss that flaming favored species with assexual reproduction and that this can impact weed-crop competition, species persistence in vineyards and others problems related with it. Also, there is a space to comment about weed control method diversification for non-weed selection. Response: Thanks for this interesting suggestion. The discussion was enhanced with relevant and recent literature studies, considering also the negative aspects of flaming treatment and suggesting different techniques for an herbicide-free weed control in the winery with a sustainable perspective. - In multivariate statistics, it is appropriated to show in figure, NMDS1 and NMDS2 percentages of coverage. Response: Actually according to main references, contrary to other ordination methods (e.g. PCA, PCoA, CA) which are eigenvector-based methods, NMDS calculations do not maximize the variability associated with individual axes of the ordination (Legendre, P., & Legendre, L. F. – 2012 . Numerical ecology. Elsevier). For this reason there is no % of variance associated with each NMDS axis. - There is any evaluation of vine plants? There was any effect of fire in plants? Response: No damages were observed on vine plants after flaming treatment. This observation was added to the revised manuscript version. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238396.r002
27 Jul 2020 Decision Letter - Amparo Lázaro, Editor PONE-D-20-07695R1 Comparison between flaming, mowing and tillage weed control in the vineyard: effects on plant community, diversity and abundance PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Boscutti, 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. ACADEMIC EDITOR: The revised manuscript has now been reviewed by one of the previous reviewers. The reviewer considers that the authors have addressed previous comments adequately, but have several concerns regarding the conclusions of the study. And I concur with these comments. Please, revise carefully the conclusions of the study and submit a revised manuscript together with a response letter answering point-by-point the comments raised. Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 10 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Amparo Lázaro, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? 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 #2: No ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. 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 #2: Yes ****** 5. 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 #2: Yes ****** 6. 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 #2: First, thanks for the authors modification on manuscript. Ir sounds better about flaming as a weed control method. But, before it publication, some chances need to be done in conclusions. Follow their conclusion and observations In this work, different techniques (intense and gentle flaming, mowing, tillage) were applied to control weeds in vineyards with an environmental-friendly approach, reducing chemical consumption and boosting for an increased plant diversity, give the ecological importance of cultivated lands. ---- For me both are not environment-friendly weed control. Also its not a conclusion to be here. As a novelty we found the analysis of plant functional trait to be highly informative in assessing the response of plant communities to weed management practices especially when compared to usual taxonomical diversity indices. ---- For me not a novelty, lot of articles found that before, WE CONFIRM. Our findings showed that flaming could be considered an appropriate practice in a sustainable model of vineyard management, aiming at preservation of economic and environmental resources ---- For me authors did not analysed preservation of economic and environmental resources. Just state that flaming should be taken into consideration as a weed control technique as is shifts community. In addition, flaming maintained plant diversity, contributing to sustainable agriculture perspective. However, the downsides of this technology have to be carefully considered, including the impact on weed-crop competition and species persistency in the vineyard. Mechanical practices were proved to be either less effective (i.e. mowing) or producing high frequency disturbance to soil (i.e. tillage). ---- OK for me Future research in the field is needed to extend the present results, investigating also different soil and climatic conditions, as well as the utilization of alternative herbicide-free weed management solutions in the perspective of an integrated weed management, such as cover-crops. --- This is discussion not conclusion ****** 7. 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. Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238396.r003
Revision 2
28 Jul 2020 Author Response ACADEMIC EDITOR: The revised manuscript has now been reviewed by one of the previous reviewers. The reviewer considers that the authors have addressed previous comments adequately, but have several concerns regarding the conclusions of the study. And I concur with these comments. Please, revise carefully the conclusions of the study and submit a revised manuscript together with a response letter answering point-by-point the comments raised. Response: We thank the editor for the opportunity to reconsider our manuscript. We addressed all the comments about the conclusion arose by reviewer 2. Reviewer #2: First, thanks for the authors modification on manuscript. Ir sounds better about flaming as a weed control method. But, before it publication, some chances need to be done in conclusions. Response: The conclusion section was revised in accordance to reviewer comments, as kindly requested. Follow their conclusion and observations REVIEWER In this work, different techniques (intense and gentle flaming, mowing, tillage) were applied to control weeds in vineyards with an environmental-friendly approach, reducing chemical consumption and boosting for an increased plant diversity, give the ecological importance of cultivated lands. ---- For me both are not environment-friendly weed control. Also its not a conclusion to be here. Response: The sentence was modified considering reviewer’s observations, focusing on the conclusions drawn from the experimental design. As a novelty we found the analysis of plant functional trait to be highly informative in assessing the response of plant communities to weed management practices especially when compared to usual taxonomical diversity indices. ---- For me not a novelty, lot of articles found that before, WE CONFIRM. Response: The referred sentence was modified as kindly suggested. Our findings showed that flaming could be considered an appropriate practice in a sustainable model of vineyard management, aiming at preservation of economic and environmental resources ---- For me authors did not analysed preservation of economic and environmental resources. Just state that flaming should be taken into consideration as a weed control technique as is shifts community. Response: The reference to “economic and environmental resources” was removed and the observation to the shift in plant community composition was added. In addition, flaming maintained plant diversity, contributing to sustainable agriculture perspective. However, the downsides of this technology have to be carefully considered, including the impact on weed-crop competition and species persistency in the vineyard. Mechanical practices were proved to be either less effective (i.e. mowing) or producing high frequency disturbance to soil (i.e. tillage). ---- OK for me Future research in the field is needed to extend the present results, investigating also different soil and climatic conditions, as well as the utilization of alternative herbicide-free weed management solutions in the perspective of an integrated weed management, such as cover-crops. --- This is discussion not conclusion Response: The referred sentence was moved to the end of discussion section, as kindly required. In addition, some further details about the effectiveness of the proposed management techniques were included in the Conclusions section. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238396.r004
17 Aug 2020 Decision Letter - Amparo Lázaro, Editor Comparison between flaming, mowing and tillage weed control in the vineyard: effects on plant community, diversity and abundance PONE-D-20-07695R2 Dear Dr. Boscutti, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. 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 help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- 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. Kind regards, Amparo Lázaro, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238396.r005
Formally Accepted
19 Aug 2020 Acceptance Letter - Amparo Lázaro, Editor PONE-D-20-07695R2 Comparison between flaming, mowing and tillage weed control in the vineyard: effects on plant community, diversity and abundance Dear Dr. Boscutti: I'm 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 let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Amparo Lázaro Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238396.r006

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