PONE-D-21-13877

Effects of mesotrione on the control efficiency and chlorophyll fluorescence parameters of Chenopodium under simulated rainfall condations

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Guo,

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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Please find the reviewers' comments and address them point-by-point.

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Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 14 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.

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Debalin Sarangi, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Please find the reviewers' comments and address them point-by-point.

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: Title: Please correct spelling of “conditions”

I am not an expert of weed science. I believe that the manuscript was sent to me based on my experience with rainfall/irrigation science and management. Thus, I am going to limit my suggestions/comments to this aspect of the manuscript only.

Line 79: This is my main concern. The authors mentioned the rainfall intensities and intervals investigated without any context of how do these treatments hold relevance in the local climate systems.

It would be great if authors could include some justification for their choice of rainfall treatments. Ideally, I would like to see some analysis of hourly rainfall data in the last decade or a normal (30 year) period at the experimental site. To see, what was the frequency of occurrence of a particular intensity and interval at the site. This way, we will know that the experimental site is usually subject to what kind of precipitation events. The findings of the research can then be interpretable for local stakeholders.

Also, then the authors would be able to better ascertain that the application of mesotrione does not cause any efficacy loss at the experimental sites, given that in the historical rainfall data, we see that the most popular combination of intensity/interval is which one of the treatments.

It is fine if the authors chose to do this analysis only for the agricultural growing season, when weed control is relevant.

I will leave it on to the other weed science experts to peer-review this paper from that standpoint.

Reviewer #2: • Line no. 14 space

• Kindly mention control efficiency reduced how much percentage?

• Line no. 37 rewrite the sentence

• In introduction: Give at-least one example how much yield loss? What is the importance of Chenopodium weed, its biology, and morphological behavior could better explain the results.

• Mention its chemical content and concentration

• Line no. 73 materials and methods the number may be given 2

• How you controlled the rainfall intensity, duration under field condition. Also drift effect is common under field condition.

• The experiment was conducted for one season only (4 months), whereas repeated results can explain the cause and effects better.

• Line 86: manual or power operated sprayer

• Line 92: How artificial spraying mimicked the natural rain, what is the height of spraying on the weed. If you have picture just present for clear understanding

• Only chenopodium plans were measured? What about remaining weed species?

• What is the plot size?

• Study conducted in open field or green house conditions?

• Line 136: weed may be removed

• Line no. 137: mention disease like

• Line no. 203: 4th

• Results are clearly explained but, Herbicide effect was studied on weed under sole weed cultivation.

• But the response of herbicide would be different in real (mixed) condition with crop plants). Hence combined plant stand would explain better.

• No data on chenopodium leaf area, since LA is the most important factor decides the efficacy of herbicide.

• What is the retention of herbicide concentration on weed leaves?

• How much of applied herbicide was lost?

• Discussion is fine with the supporting literature. However, your results could have discussed more, for example time of rain interval, all rain intensities and interaction effect, what extent it affected.

• Discussion section is lacking the supporting data on herbicide retention on leaves, leaching loss, biomass reduction.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Hanamant M. Halli

[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 to editor.docx

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Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-13877_reviewer.pdf

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Submitted filename: table.docx

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Submitted filename: Comments to author.docx

PONE-D-21-13877R1Effects of mesotrione on the control efficiency and chlorophyll fluorescence parameters of Chenopodium album under simulated rainfall conditionsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Guo,

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 see the revision requests from the staff editors from PLOS ONE in the Journal Requirements section of this letter.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 07 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 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: 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,

Bruno Jesus, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

PLOS ONE does not copyedit manuscripts. Please see the attached PDF with minor copyediting corrections suggested from Reviewer 1. Before PLOS can consider an accept decision for this manuscript please consider the copyediting suggestions from this reviewer in the manuscript, and proofread the manuscript.

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.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

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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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: 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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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 #1: Yes

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 #1: Yes

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 #1: I am not sure if this was an error, but the authors have not responded to any of my comments in their response letter. I do not see my comments in there.

Reviewer #2: I appreciate your efforts in addressing the comments, Kindly address few more suggestions marked in the text especially in the materials and methods.

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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 #2: Yes: Hanamant M. Halli

[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: PONE-D-21-13877_R1.pdf

Effects of mesotrione on the control efficiency and chlorophyll fluorescence parameters of Chenopodium album under simulated rainfall conditions

PONE-D-21-13877R2

Dear Dr. Guo,

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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Kind regards,

Bruno Jesus, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: