Sweet chestnut standardized fractions from sustainable circular process and green tea extract: In vitro inhibitory activity against phytopathogenic fungi for innovative applications in green agriculture

Annalisa Romani; Gabriele Simone; Margherita Campo; Lorenzo Moncini; Roberta Bernini

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0247298

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 7, 2020
29 Jul 2020 Decision Letter - Vijai Gupta, Editor PONE-D-20-10008 Sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) standardized fractions from sustainable circular process and green tea (Camellia sinensis L.) extract: in vitro inhibitory activity against phytopathogenic fungi for innovative applications in green agriculture PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Campo, 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. Your MS needs significant corrections before we consider this MS for further review for publication in PLOS One. Kindly do the needful changes as suggested by the reviewers and submit a point wise author response. Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 12 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, Vijai Gupta, PhD in Microbiology 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 suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. If you do not know anyone who can help you do this, you may wish to consider employing a professional scientific editing service. Whilst you may use any professional scientific editing service of your choice, PLOS has partnered with both American Journal Experts (AJE) and Editage to provide discounted services to PLOS authors. Both organizations have experience helping authors meet PLOS guidelines and can provide language editing, translation, manuscript formatting, and figure formatting to ensure your manuscript meets our submission guidelines. To take advantage of our partnership with AJE, visit the AJE website (http://learn.aje.com/plos/) for a 15% discount off AJE services. To take advantage of our partnership with Editage, visit the Editage website (www.editage.com) and enter referral code PLOSEDIT for a 15% discount off Editage services. If the PLOS editorial team finds any language issues in text that either AJE or Editage has edited, the service provider will re-edit the text for free. Upon resubmission, please provide the following: The name of the colleague or the details of the professional service that edited your manuscript A copy of your manuscript showing your changes by either highlighting them or using track changes (uploaded as a supporting information file) A clean copy of the edited manuscript (uploaded as the new manuscript file) 3.Thank you for stating the following in the Financial Disclosure section: [This research is part of the following projects: Tuscany Region, POR FESR 2014/2020. Nat-BackeryInnov "Innovative production of a bakery line based on natural functional extracts for wellness and sports”; Tuscany Region, POR CREO FESR 2014-2020 “Formulation of new sustainable products for agriculture based on natural extracts”, LIFE18 ENV/NL/000043 - LIFE “PlantsforPlants”.]. We note that one or more of the authors are employed by a commercial company: PIN scrl Please provide an amended Funding Statement declaring this commercial affiliation, as well as a statement regarding the Role of Funders in your study. If the funding organization did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript and only provided financial support in the form of authors' salaries and/or research materials, please review your statements relating to the author contributions, and ensure you have specifically and accurately indicated the role(s) that these authors had in your study. You can update author roles in the Author Contributions section of the online submission form. Please also include the following statement within your amended Funding Statement. “The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors [insert relevant initials], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.” If your commercial affiliation did play a role in your study, please state and explain this role within your updated Funding Statement. 2. Please also provide an updated Competing Interests Statement declaring this commercial affiliation along with any other relevant declarations relating to employment, consultancy, patents, products in development, or marketed products, etc. Within your Competing Interests Statement, please confirm that this commercial affiliation does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests) . If this adherence statement is not accurate and there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared. Please include both an updated Funding Statement and Competing Interests Statement in your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf. Please know it is PLOS ONE policy for corresponding authors to declare, on behalf of all authors, all potential competing interests for the purposes of transparency. PLOS defines a competing interest as anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to one of the journals. Competing interests can be financial or non-financial, professional, or personal. Competing interests can arise in relationship to an organization or another person. Please follow this link to our website for more details on competing interests: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests Additional Editor Comments (if provided): Dear Author, Your MS "Sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) standardized fractions from sustainable circular process and green tea (Camellia sinensis L.) extract: in vitro inhibitory activity against phytopathogenic fungi for innovative applications in green agriculture" needs significant corrections before we consider this MS for further review for publication in PLOS One. Kindly do the needful changes as suggested by the reviewers and submit a point wise author response. [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: This paper needs to be carefully reorganized with a clearly stated argument spelled out in the opening pages. The authors should work harder on the approach adopted, establish a clear theoretical background to contextualize the analysis and narrow the scope of the analysis to specific aspects. Apart from compiling key studies, a critical approach to the literature is required. There is a need of offering detailed insights regarding the main purpose of the paper and its contribution. The discussions require more structure and there is a need of offering a clear assessment of reviewed literature. The main contributions of the paper should be presented as part of the empirical discussions or critical assessment on the core research outcomes. The main contribution should be emphasised more and the concluding statements should be stronger. The paper presents its points in a rather descriptive manner, referring to relevant sources but without really discussing them. It brings up interesting points, but stating them rather than arguing for them. The research idea is not properly contextualised, as there is a need of offering a detailed review of relevant literature that help the authors developing the key arguments that support their proposed research. Data gathering and data analysis can be reconsidered and discussed more comprehensively. The lead up argument for the study and results section appear to be too loosely constructed. There is some discussion of the limitations of the study however these are not considered in terms of the implications on the study findings. Some bibliographic references are simply brought up without being developed, or without an adequate explanation as to why they are relevant. Reviewer #2: Reviewer’s Report: PONE-D-20-10008 Sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) standardized fractions from sustainable circular process and green tea (Camellia sinensis L.) extract: in vitro inhibitory activity against phytopathogenic fungi for innovative applications in green agriculture Here are some minor corrections: Line 316-318 figures title should be removed Line 353 space should be removed I suggest Accept the manuscript for publication in PLOS ONE. ****** 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. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Review Report_PLOS ONE - 16.6.2020.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247298.r001
Revision 1
30 Sep 2020 Author Response 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 We would like to thank the Editors for their comments. We checked PLOS ONE style templates and ensured that our manuscript meets the style requirements. 2.We suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. If you do not know anyone who can help you do this, you may wish to consider employing a professional scientific editing service. We had the manuscript checked for language usage, spelling, and grammar and fixed some inaccuracies, as evidenced in the text of our Manuscript. 3.Thank you for stating the following in the Financial Disclosure section: [This research is part of the following projects: Tuscany Region, POR FESR 2014/2020. Nat-BackeryInnov "Innovative production of a bakery line based on natural functional extracts for wellness and sports”; Tuscany Region, POR CREO FESR 2014-2020 “Formulation of new sustainable products for agriculture based on natural extracts”, LIFE18 ENV/NL/000043 - LIFE “PlantsforPlants”.]. We note that one or more of the authors are employed by a commercial company: PIN scrl 1. Please provide an amended Funding Statement declaring this commercial affiliation, as well as a statement regarding the Role of Funders in your study. If the funding organization did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript and only provided financial support in the form of authors' salaries and/or research materials, please review your statements relating to the author contributions, and ensure you have specifically and accurately indicated the role(s) that these authors had in your study. You can update author roles in the Author Contributions section of the online submission form. Please also include the following statement within your amended Funding Statement. “The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors [insert relevant initials], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.” If your commercial affiliation did play a role in your study, please state and explain this role within your updated Funding Statement. 2. Please also provide an updated Competing Interests Statement declaring this commercial affiliation along with any other relevant declarations relating to employment, consultancy, patents, products in development, or marketed products, etc. Within your Competing Interests Statement, please confirm that this commercial affiliation does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests) . If this adherence statement is not accurate and there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared. Please include both an updated Funding Statement and Competing Interests Statement in your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf. Please know it is PLOS ONE policy for corresponding authors to declare, on behalf of all authors, all potential competing interests for the purposes of transparency. PLOS defines a competing interest as anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to one of the journals. Competing interests can be financial or non-financial, professional, or personal. Competing interests can arise in relationship to an organization or another person. Please follow this link to our website for more details on competing interests: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests We would like to thank the Editors for pointing this. The affiliation reported in the manuscript has been completed by adding a lacking part of the description. PIN scrl is not a commercial company, but an University Center for educational and scientific services for the University of Florence, as now indicated (see the affiliations in the Title page). So the funder of this research is not PIN scrl, but Tuscany Region for projects POR FESR 2014/2020 Nat-BackeryInnov "Innovative production of a bakery line based on natural functional extracts for wellness and sports” and POR CREO FESR 2014-2020 “Formulation of new sustainable products for agriculture based on natural extracts”, and the European Community for LIFE Project Plants for Plants, “Boost conventional agriculture’s confidence: new organic bio-stimulants to reduce water, nutrients and pesticide demand project”, LIFE18 ENV/NL/000043. So we can exclude the existence of competing interests. Reviewer #1: This paper needs to be carefully reorganized with a clearly stated argument spelled out in the opening pages. The authors should work harder on the approach adopted, establish a clear theoretical background to contextualize the analysis and narrow the scope of the analysis to specific aspects. Apart from compiling key studies, a critical approach to the literature is required. There is a need of offering detailed insights regarding the main purpose of the paper and its contribution. The discussions require more structure and there is a need of offering a clear assessment of reviewed literature. The main contributions of the paper should be presented as part of the empirical discussions or critical assessment on the core research outcomes. The main contribution should be emphasised more and the concluding statements should be stronger. The paper presents its points in a rather descriptive manner, referring to relevant sources but without really discussing them. It brings up interesting points, but stating them rather than arguing for them. The research idea is not properly contextualised, as there is a need of offering a detailed review of relevant literature that help the authors developing the key arguments that support their proposed research. Data gathering and data analysis can be reconsidered and discussed more comprehensively. The lead up argument for the study and results section appear to be too loosely constructed. There is some discussion of the limitations of the study however these are not considered in terms of the implications on the study findings. Some bibliographic references are simply brought up without being developed, or without an adequate explanation as to why they are relevant. We would like to thank the reviewer for his/her comment. As he/she suggested, the paper has been reorganized, in particular the “Introduction” and “Results and Discussion” sections. Both the results and literature were discussed more in depth, also by adding some new references to recent studies, to better contextualize our study and explain the main purpose and contribution of the paper. Reviewer #2: Reviewer’s Report: PONE-D-20-10008 Line 316-318 figures title should be removed: we would like to thank the reviewer for his/her comment. According to PlosOne Manuscript body formatting guidelines, “Each figure caption should appear directly after the paragraph in which they are first cited”. For this reason we have kept the figure captions in the same position. Line 353 space should be removed: the space has been removed. • Furthermore, although no requests were made, we have replaced the file of Figure 1 by uploading a new one of better quality, as we noticed that the previous image had an insufficient quality. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.doc https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247298.r002
5 Jan 2021 Decision Letter - Vijai Gupta, Editor PONE-D-20-10008R1 Sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) standardized fractions from sustainable circular process and green tea (Camellia sinensis L.) extract: in vitro inhibitory activity against phytopathogenic fungi for innovative applications in green agriculture PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Campo, 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. MS still needs a few corrections before it maybe considered for publication in PLSO One. Kindly do the needful changes as motioned by the reviewers and submit a revised MS. Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 19 2021 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, Vijai Gupta, PhD in Microbiology Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (if provided): MS still needs a few corrections before it maybe considered for publication in PLSO One. Kindly do the needful changes as motioned by the reviewers and submit a revised MS. [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 #3: (No Response) Reviewer #4: 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 #3: Partly Reviewer #4: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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 #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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 #3: No Reviewer #4: 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 #3: (No Response) Reviewer #4: I have gone through the manuscript and found very informative research work on antimicrobial activities of extract took from tea in inhibitory test against pathogen. I strongly recommending to this research paper for accepting to publish in forthcoming issue of the journal. ****** 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 #3: No Reviewer #4: Yes:** I have gone through the manuscript and found very informative research work on antimicrobial activities of extract took from tea in inhibitory test against pathogen. I strongly recommending to this research paper for accepting to publish in forthcoming issue of the journal. [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. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Comments_PLoS ONE 2.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247298.r003
Revision 2
20 Jan 2021 Author Response Dear PLOS ONE Editors and Reviewers, All the authors would like to thank the Editor and Reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript PONE-D-20-10008R1 entitled “Sweet chestnut standardized fractions from sustainable circular process and green tea extract: in vitro inhibitory activity against phytopathogenic fungi for innovative applications in green agriculture”. The manuscript has been revised according to all Reviewers’ comments and all corrections have been marked-up in the copy labelled “Revised Manuscript with Track Changes”; as requested, also an unmarked version without tracked changes, labelled “Manuscript”, has been uploaded. Comment 1: Author should consider using either common name or scientific name in the title and use both on the first mention in the manuscript. Then choose which to use throughout and make it consistent. For sweet chestnut and green tea, only common names were kept in the title; on the first mention both in the Abstract and in the text (Introduction section), common names with the complete scientific names are reported; only common names are used for the following mentions. Also pathogens names were checked and fixed. Abstract: Line 39-40: “can attack also plants in the field” can be stated as “can also attack field plants”. Done. Comment 2: Line 83: Should include the following reference: Mohammed Bule et al. Tannins (hydrolysable tannins, condensed tannins, phlorotannins, flavono-ellagitannins). Recent Advances in Natural Products Analysis. Elsevier, 2020, pp. 132-146. Though the introduction is relevant and theory based, sufficient information on previous findings is not presented well for the readers to follow the present study rationale. The reference was added in the text. The “Introduction” section has been revised and improved (lines 156-167 in particular) in order to let the readers better understand our study rationale. Comment 3: In method section: Lines 167-173: Author may consider including the flow diagram of the dry extraction process. The flow diagram of the extraction and fractionation industrial process was already reported in a previous publication (Campo et al., 2016), so it is no more possible to use the figure. Here we cited the articles where we described accurately the whole process also by showing the flow diagram (Campo et al., 2016; Lucarini et al., 2018). Comment 4: Line 226-227: Must provide the reference to “previously described”. As it could seem like a reference to literature, in the place of “as previously described”, we have inserted “as described above (see “In vitro test of radial growth inhibition”)”. The reference, indeed, is to what described in the previous paragraph. Comment 5: Line 266: Consider using “Campo et al.” instead of “this research group”. “Campo et al.” was added instead of “this research group”. Comment 6: Line 275: Please clarify “6-months and 12-months” or “12-months”. In the place of “The dried SCW fraction was chemically stable at the 6-months and 12-months as demonstrated by the analytical controls”, we added the following sentence: “The dried SCW fraction was chemically stable as demonstrated by control HPLC/DAD analysis repeated after 6 and 12 months.”. This new sentence should be more clear than the first one. Comment 7: Consider proofreading the manuscript. The whole manuscript has been carefully revised and checked. Some typos were fixed and some sentences were re-written to make them more clear. Particular attention was paid to the English language. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247298.r004
5 Feb 2021 Decision Letter - Vijai Gupta, Editor Sweet chestnut standardized fractions from sustainable circular process and green tea extract: in vitro inhibitory activity against phytopathogenic fungi for innovative applications in green agriculture PONE-D-20-10008R2 Dear Dr. Campo, 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, Vijai Gupta, PhD in Microbiology Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): All the comments have been addressed. Now paper can be accepted for publication in PLOS One. Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247298.r005
Formally Accepted
12 Feb 2021 Acceptance Letter - Vijai Gupta, Editor PONE-D-20-10008R2 Sweet chestnut standardized fractions from sustainable circular process and green tea extract: in vitro inhibitory activity against phytopathogenic fungi for innovative applications in green agriculture Dear Dr. Campo: 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. Vijai Gupta Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247298.r006

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .