PONE-D-21-35009Responses and sensitivities of maize phenology to climate change from 1971 to 2020 in Henan Province, ChinaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zhang,

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.

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Vassilis G. Aschonitis

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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: Recommendation: Reject

The survey reports an interesting topic that points out the effect of climate change on maize phenology and its sensitivity. The manuscript presents a certain gap in standard English. A large amount of reliable references lacks to statements making the manuscript with low basis on previous study (that are largely found). The manuscript didn’t show any effect of climate change on detailed phenological stages. It only showed the effect of climate change on yield and on all phenological stages. It is a huge gap that lead me to take my decision concerning the manuscript. Additionally, authors mentioned several times the term “weather” which is not the case of studying meteorological parameters over a 50 years-period (being climate rather than weather). Moreover, results weren’t approximately discussed nor compared to previous studies, which was also one of the major gaps of the manuscript. Authors mentioned that all the data were present in the manuscript and its supporting files; while it is not the case as the data on which they relied to present the predictions and all presented models isn’t available. I think that the manuscript doesn’t fully merit to be published in PLOS One; however, I ask authors to take into consideration the following comments which will help them to improve their manuscript.

1. Page 1, line 12: Kindly adjust as follow: “ultimately its yield”.

2. Page 1, lines 13–14: Kindly replace “in different growth periods of maize” by “in different phenological stages of maize”.

3. Page 1, line 14: Kindly replace “historical weather” by “climate” as the climate is a state of weather at a very long time starting 30 years and more.

4. Page 1, line 15: Kindly adjust the sentence as follow: “The comprehensive suitability model showed capability of correctly…”

5. Page 1, lines 15–18: “The comprehensive… data”: The sentence is quite long; accordingly, kindly reformulate it to be more concise.

6. Page 1, lines 18–19: “The correlation… are analyzed”: Kindly mention the type of correlation and its strength in the abstract part. You cannot mention it as an analyzed factor while the objective is to mention what did you find in the abstract’s results mention.

7. Page 1, lines 19–20: “The sensitivities… method”: Same recommendation as mentioned in the previous comment.

8. Page 3, lines 37–42: “Many… quality”: This whole section lacks reliable sources (references); accordingly, kindly provide them.

9. Page 3, line 42: Kindly adjust as follow: “Gu et al. [13,14]”.

10. Page 3, line 43: “for growing particular crops”: Kindly mention these crops.

11. Page 3, line 43: Kindly adjust the sentence as follow: “Gonzalez et al. [15] established a model…”

12. Page 3, line 46: Kindly remove reference 16 as it has no relation with the mentioned statement.

13. Page 3, line 46: Kindly adjust the sentence as follow: “Lamptey [17] used…”

14. Page 4, lines 48–49: Kindly adjust as follow: “Wang et al. [18]”.

15. Page 4, line 51: Kindly remove “[18]”, adjust as follow: “Robin [19] and provide the corresponding reliable source “19” in the references list as the one present is different than mentioned in the text.

16. Page 4, line 55: Kindly remove “but”.

17. Page 4, lines 58–59: Kindly adjust the sentence as follow: “The model is mechanistic and takes into account thermal effects, insolation, and different varieties [20–22].”

18. Page 4, line 59: Kindly adjust the sentence as follow: “Zhao et al. [23] used fuzzy…”

19. Page 4, line 61: Kindly remove “[23]”.

20. Page 4, line 62: Kindly adjust as follow: “Yao et al. [24]”.

21. Page 4, line 65: Kindly remove “[24]”.

22. Page 4, lines 65–66: Kindly adjust as follow: “systematic research on…”

23. Page 4, line 66: Kindly remove “That was the object of this study.”

24. Pages 4–5, lines 69–71: “The model… corn”: These statements are related to the Materials and methods section as they describe the approaches take on. Accordingly, kindly remove them.

25. Page 5: Kindly add the title: “2. Materials and methods”.

26. Page 5, line 74: Kindly adjust the title numbering as: “2.1. A comprehensive climate suitability (CCS) model for maize”.

27. Page 5, lines 75–76: “Kindly adjust the sentence as follow: “its whole growth period can be divided…”

28. Page 5, line 79: Kindly adjust “considers” and remove “should”.

29. Page 5, lines 82–83: Kindly adjust the sentence as follow: “Therefore, the independent suitability models need to be first established for the four factors.”

30. Page 5, line 84: Kindly adjust the title numbering as: “2.2. Temperature suitability model”.

31. Page 6, line 103: Kindly adjust the title numbering as: “2.3. Precipitation suitability model”.

32. Page 6, lines 104–106: “Winter… accumulation”: These statements lack reliable sources (references); accordingly, kindly provide them.

33. Page 7, line 108: Kindly adjust as follow: “Wei et al. [26] suggested…”

34. Page 7, line 108: The sentence is incomplete; accordingly, kindly reformulate it.

35. Page 7, lines 108–109: Kindly remove “In this paper” and adjust the sentence as follow: “the precipitation suitability was calculated using the following equation”.

36. Page 7, lines 114–115: “That generates… Table 2”: The sentence is badly written in standard English; accordingly, kindly reformulate it.

37. Page 7, line 121: Kindly adjust the title numbering as: “2.4. Sunshine suitability model”.

38. Pages 7–8, lines 122–126: “Maize… maize”: These statements lack reliable sources; accordingly, kindly provide them.

39. Page 8, line 124: Kindly remove “every day”.

40. Page 8, line 125: Kindly adjust as follow: “inadequate” and “slows down”.

41. Page 8, lines 127–129: “In a certain… suitable”: These statement lack reliable sources; accordingly, kindly provide them.

42. Page 8, lines 129–130: Kindly adjust as follow: “Li et al. [27] suggested…”

43. Page 8, line 138: Kindly provide the source of Table 3 parameters details.

44. Page 9, line 143: Kindly adjust the title numbering as: “2.5. Wind suitability model”.

45. Page 9, lines 144–148: “Wind… variety”: These statements lack reliable sources (references); accordingly, kindly provide them.

46. Page 9, lines 148–149: Kindly adjust this sentence as follow: “In the current study, focus was made on flowering…”

47. Page 9, lines 149–151: “During that… yield”: These statements lack reliable sources (references); accordingly, kindly provide them.

48. Page 9, lines 154–155: “which are taken as 6.0m/s and 10m/s in this discussion”: Kindly remove “in this discussion” and mention the source you relied on to state these numbers as suitable to adopt.

49. Page 9, line 157: “where nw is the number of days in the flowering period—15 days in this discussion”: Kindly remove “in this discussion” and mention the source you relied on to state this number as suitable to adopt.

50. Page 9, line 158: Kindly adjust the title numbering as: “2.6. A comprehensive reduced yield model”.

51. Page 10, lines 159–163: “The ideal… correlation”: These statements lack reliable sources (references); accordingly, kindly provide them.

52. Page 10, line 173: Kindly adjust the title numbering as: “2.7. Sensitivities of comprehensive reduced yield model”.

53. Page 10, lines 174–178: “The climatic… one unit”: These statements lack reliable sources (references); accordingly, kindly provide them.

54. Page 10, line 178: Kindly replace “In this paper” by “In the current study”.

55. Page 11, line 191: Kindly replace this title by “3. Results and discussion”.

56. Page 11, lines 194–195: “It is assumed… factors”: This statement lacks a reliable source (reference); accordingly, kindly provide it.

57. Page 11, line 199: Kindly adjust as follow: “YL”.

58. Page 11, line 200: You’re discussing a climate change over 50 years, you cannot say “weather” !!

59. Page 12, line 206: Kindly remove “firstly”.

60. Page 12, line 207: “Based on the meteorological data of Henan Province from 1971 to 2020”: We are not able to observe the detailed data in these years; accordingly, kindly provide them in a supplementary file”.

61. Page 12, line 209: Kindly adjust as follow: “The relationship between…”

62. Page 12, line 214: Kindly replace “set in this paper” by “adopted in the current study”.

63. Page 14, line 229: Kindly adjust as follow: “The relationship between…”

64. Page 14, lines 230–232: “That is not… 15 days”: The sentence is badly written in standard English; accordingly, kindly reformulate it.

65. Page 14, line 236: Kindly remove “So”.

66. Page 14, line 239: Kindly replace “in this paper” by “in the current study”.

67. Page 15, line 240: Kindly adjust as follow: “to simulate”.

68. Page 15, line 243: Kindly adjust as follow: “in previous literature”.

69. Page 16, line 264: Kindly adjust as follow: “The fluctuation of temperature and precipitation”.

70. Page 16, lines 264–267: “The decrease… decrease them”: These statements lack reliable sources (references); accordingly, kindly provide them.

71. Page 17, line 271: Kindly remove “In summary”.

72. Page 17, lines 271–279: This whole section is a summary of the current’s study findings. Kindly remove it.

Reviewer #2: "Responses and sensitivities of maize phenology to climate change from 1971 to 2020 in Henan Province, China" is well written. It is about the climate change effects on maize under particular conditions of China.

Reviewer #3: Dear author

In a general review of your paper, I found that the computational and mathematical aspects of this paper are predominant, and such writing certainly demonstrates the authors' mastery of the concepts of simulation and the use of performance prediction models using real farm multi-year data.

Therefore, considering the importance of predicting the change of yield of important crops such as corn in the face of climate change, I consider this article to be very important and practical. However, it is necessary to use specialized words that are generally accepted by experts in this field in expressing biological topics. I have suggested some tips in this regard.

In addition, I found the method of referring to the research of others unconventional in the text of your article. However, to address this shortcoming, I have written some suggestions for you that I hope you will find useful.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Majid AghaAlikhani(Ph.D.)

Professor

Weed-Crop Ecophysiology

Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Agrotechnology

Department of Agrotechnology

Faculty of Agriculture

Tarbiat Modares University

PO Box 14115-336

Tehran, Iran

Phone:+98 21 48292099

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Reviewer Recommendation and Comments.docx

PONE-D-21-35009R1Responses and sensitivities of maize phenology to weather change from 1971 to 2020 in Henan Province, ChinaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zhang,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 02 2022 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 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: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Vassilis G. Aschonitis

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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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 #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #1: Recommendation: Accept

After careful and deep observation of all the authors corrections, for which I am deeply grateful for taking all my comments and recommendations into consideration, I find that the manuscript has now a merit to be published in “PLOS One” in its current form. Authors provided all the reliable sources that were lacking in literature (Introduction), Materials and methods and Discussion parts, adjusted all the sentences that were unclear or badly written in standard English and provided all the supporting data that they were asked for as additional files. I am deeply grateful for this big improvement in the manuscript, that made me completely change my mind in its concern.

Reviewer #3: I reviewed the authors' responses to my points and comments, as well as their responses to the suggestions of two other respected referees. I hereby confirm that the authors have taken note of all comments made by the reviewers and have made any necessary changes to the text of the revised version of the article. However, I consider it necessary to pay attention to the following two points and make the relevant correction.

- 1- The author did not understand the meaning of reviewer No. 1, who basically rejected the article, and changed the correct phrase "Climate Change" to the incorrect phrase "weather" in manuscript title, abstract and a few sentences of the body. Do not forget the weather gives temperature, radiation, humidity, etc. in a short period of time, such as 24 a day and 7 day a week. Meanwhile whenever we talk about the status of these parameters in the long run, the term climate should be used. Since this article also uses atmospheric structural data for a period of 50 years, it is appropriate to use the term "climate change" like the original version of the article.

- 2- Although in the text of the article, the typographical error about the word "ratio" that was written as "radio" have been, the authors forgot to correct this point in the relevant figures as well. In this regard, in Figures 2, 3, 4 and 5 in its vertical axis, the word "radio" should be modified to the word "ratio". There is also a grammatical error in the text of the legend inside the figures. In Figures 2, 3, 4, and 5, which refer to reduced yield in terms of temperature, rainfall, solar radiation, and wind, respectively, in the legend, the word "reduces" must be corrected to "reduced".

With best wishes and kind Regards

Reviewer # 3

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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 #1: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Majid AghaAlikhani (Ph.D.)

Professor

Weed-Crop Ecophysiology

Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Agrotechnology

Department of Agrotechnology

Faculty of Agriculture

Tarbiat Modares University

PO Box 14115-336

Tehran, Iran

Phone:+98 21 48292099

Facsimile: +98 21 48292200

Mail to: maghaalikhani@modares.ac.ir

Alternate e-mail: majid.aghaalikhani@gmail.com

[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.

Responses and sensitivities of maize phenology to climate change from 1971 to 2020 in Henan Province, China

PONE-D-21-35009R2

Dear Dr. Zhang,

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.

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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,

Vassilis G. Aschonitis

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: