A potential relationship between soil disinfestation efficacy and leaf green reflectance

Steven B. Kim; Steven A. Fennimore; Dong Sub Kim

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0271677

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 21, 2022
19 May 2022 Decision Letter - Miquel Vall-llosera Camps, Editor PONE-D-22-01998A potential relationship between soil disinfestation efficacy and leaf green reflectancePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Kim, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. Firstly, we would like to apologize for the delay in processing your manuscript. It has been exceptionally difficult to secure reviewers to evaluate your study. We have now received one completed review, which is available below. The reviewer has raised significant scientific concerns about the study that need to be addressed in a revision. Please note that we have only been able to secure a single reviewer to assess your manuscript. We are issuing a decision on your manuscript at this point to prevent further delays in the evaluation of your manuscript. Please be aware that the editor who handles your revised manuscript might find it necessary to invite additional reviewers to assess this work once the revised manuscript is submitted. 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PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The present manuscript deals with the soil disinfestation efficacy assessment using color digital photography. The manuscript is readable and some interesting results were obtained. However, I have some concerns like The treatments applied for the year 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 were significantly different. Under such a situation, can these be compared? This is clearly visible from Fig. 3. In year 2019-2020, Chloropicrin and steam treatments were almost similar while it was different in 2020-2021. The classification of RGB codes in the order from dark to light green seems quite arbitrary. It should be concrete based on solid statistics or physics principle. My specific comments are L27: “We hypothesized that plant health could be quantified and treatments differentiated” to “We hypothesized that plant health could be quantified and treatments can be differentiated” L64-66: Delete “Nitrogen and magnesium deficiencies in strawberry plants results in low chlorophyll concentration in leaves [12]” L82: Provide the full form of “OM” L87: Was “Chloropicrin” sprayed on bare soil? L98: “(PicClor 60 EC) was applied October 24, 2020” to “(PicClor 60 EC) was applied on October 24, 2020” L110: What do you mean by RGB codes and area occupied by RGB code? Please describe in detail. L125: Was the weight calculated for each color or only for green? L141: Which packages were used in R software? Test the normality of the ratio and log transformed ratio. L192: “correlation coefficients” to “coefficient of determination” L193: “correlation coefficients” to “coefficient of determination” L202: “Soil pests” to “Soil borne pests” L206-207: “weeds and hand removal is expensive.” To “weeds. Hand removal of weeds is expensive.” L211: “environmentally friendly” to “environment friendly” L226-227: Sentence is incomplete L238-242: Meaningless, please rewrite. L247-248: “effective of a method of soil disinfestation as the chloropicrin application.” To “effective as the chloropicrin application for soil disinfestation.” L250: “treasures” to “treatments” L253: For which treatment? ****** 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: Yes:** Bappa Das [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. 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Revision 1
10 Jun 2022 Author Response The treatments applied for the year 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 were significantly different. Under such a situation, can these be compared? This is clearly visible from Fig. 3. In year 2019-2020, Chloropicrin and steam treatments were almost similar while it was different in 2020-2021. Response Thank you for your comment. Though the treatment applications were not identical, we observed similar trends between the two seasons. In Fig 3., the locations (centers) of the distributions have the same order. In addition, Figs 2, 5, 6, and 7 show similar trends between S and P which are distinguishable from C (The yields both years followed the same trends.). Therefore, the overall effect of S and C on the plant health (observed by the colors) and the productivity are similar. Here is another important point that we needed to include in the discussion. We are aware that the both trials, the difference of the soil temperature in the steam treatments were caused by the difference of the steam machines (Fig. 1). This difference of the soil temperature may be the cause of the different results between the two trials, and there are many previous studies proving this. This inserted into the discussion (Line 215). The classification of RGB codes in the order from dark to light green seems quite arbitrary. It should be concrete based on solid statistics or physics principle. Response Our choice was based on statistics (i.e., calculated from the data). In general, based upon our knowledge, there are no definite classifications of “dark green” and “light green,” and there are a number of (complicated) ways to combine R, G, and B for color analysis (e.g., Angulo & Serra, 2007). Instead of using the complicated formulas, which were not helpful in our study, we matched observed images and distributions of RGB codes. While green colors have the common property of G > R and G > B, a green color tends to be darker when (R + B) / G is close to zero (i.e., R/G and B/G are close to zero). It is statically shown in Fig 3, and the observed pattern (the order) is consistent between the two seasons. We added this explanation in the section of statistical method (Line 118) and in the section of results (Line 155). L110: What do you mean by RGB codes and area occupied by RGB code? Please describe in detail. Response Line 109 ‘The image analysis program outputs RGB codes per image file and areas (pixels) occupied by each RGB code.’ to ‘The image analysis program outputs RGB codes and the number of pixels.’ L126: Was the weight calculated for each color or only for green? Response The weights were only for green, and we added one sentence (Line 130). Thank you for helping us making the manuscript clearer. L141: Which packages were used in R software? Test the normality of the ratio and log transformed ratio. Response lmer and lmerTest packages were used for the mixed-effects model (Bates et al., 2015; Kuznetsova et al., 2017), and we added the related references. Regarding the normality, we tested the normality of the log-transformed ratio because it is what we used in the analysis. We did not observe severe violations of normality. The p-values calculated from the Shapiro test were 0.23 and 0.42 for the 2020 data and the 2021 data, respectively, and we reported in the results section (Line 146). Thank you. L27: “We hypothesized that plant health could be quantified and treatments differentiated” to “We hypothesized that plant health could be quantified and treatments can be differentiated” L64-66: Delete “Nitrogen and magnesium deficiencies in strawberry plants results in low chlorophyll concentration in leaves [12]” L82: Provide the full form of “OM” L87: Was “Chloropicrin” sprayed on bare soil? L98: “(PicClor 60 EC) was applied October 24, 2020” to “(PicClor 60 EC) was applied on October 24, 2020” L192: “correlation coefficients” to “coefficient of determination” L193: “correlation coefficients” to “coefficient of determination” L202: “Soil pests” to “Soil borne pests” L206-207: “weeds and hand removal is expensive.” To “weeds. Hand removal of weeds is expensive.” L211: “environmentally friendly” to “environment friendly” L226-227: Sentence is incomplete L238-242: Meaningless, please rewrite. L247-248: “effective of a method of soil disinfestation as the chloropicrin application.” To “effective as the chloropicrin application for soil disinfestation.” L250: “treasures” to “treatments” L253: For which treatment? Response Revised as suggested. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271677.r002
6 Jul 2022 Decision Letter - Aradhana Mishra, Editor A potential relationship between soil disinfestation efficacy and leaf green reflectance PONE-D-22-01998R1 Dear Dr. Kim, 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, Aradhana Mishra, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): 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 #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 #1: Yes 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: Authors have addressed all the comments satisfactorily and I can suggest the publication of the manuscript in Plos One. Reviewer #2: In the manuscript entitled "A potential relationship between soil disinfestation efficacy and leaf green reflectance", the authors have evaluated steam as an alternative method of soil disinfestation to fumigation. In my opinion, the manuscript is sound and has the potential to be published. Minor comment Please include the full form of any abbreviations used in the abstract of this manuscript. ****** 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: Yes: Bappa Das Reviewer #2: Yes: Sahil Mahfooz ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271677.r003
Formally Accepted
14 Jul 2022 Acceptance Letter - Aradhana Mishra, Editor PONE-D-22-01998R1 A potential relationship between soil disinfestation efficacy and leaf green reflectance Dear Dr. Kim: 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. Aradhana Mishra Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271677.r004

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