PONE-D-22-19414Macroscopic and microscopic study on floral biology and pollinationof Cinnamomum verum Blume (Sri Lankan)PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Bandaranayake,

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Muhammad Imran

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: 

"The Ministry of Primary Industries and Social Empowerment through the National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka under the special Cinnamon project – Grant No: NSF SP/CIN/2016/01. "

Please state what role the funders took in the study.  If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." 

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"Funded by the Ministry of Primary Industries and Social Empowerment through the National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka under the special Cinnamon project – Grant No: NSF SP/CIN/2016/01."

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Additional Editor Comments:

As the manuscript has been precisely reviewed by the experts in the disciplines and after thoroughly going through their reports it is cleared that there are some shorts comes which need to be address before publishing it so the decision is recorded as a Major Revision. Enclosed please find the reviewers’ report on your paper. I suggest to the authors a complete typographical and grammatical revision. Most of the references used to seem a little old to me, I suggest that the authors update and insert new references, to corroborate the assertions presented by the authors. Statistical section is very weak and need major attention in this section. So, according to the recommendations made by the valuable reviewers, the manuscript needs comprehensive major revisions.

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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: No

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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: No

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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: No

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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: The manuscript presented is of good importance and will be benefit for the scientific community.

Here are my comments and suggestions:

The abstract should be rewrite and authors should present clearly this section to capture their result and how this will be useful.

No proper flow in the introduction and too difficult for the readers to understand the authors.

Material and method need adjustment: I will invite authors to summarize in a table format all the data capture, code use, period of collection and nature of the data (qualitative/quantitative). The analysis section very weak and authors need to address this points (which software was used for the analysis, which model was used, how the factors were considered/radom/fixed) in addition to this authors should add the regression analysis to display how the weather parameters impact on the flower both males and females.

Did authors test the pollen viability before conduction hand pollination. if not how sure authors relies on the current results.

In the results section, some sections look more like discussion. please move those sentences into the discussion section.

Please use correlation analysis considering only the quantitative variables to see the relationship among the variables (you can use as well the the variety type as factor see this link https://r-graph-gallery.com/199-correlation-matrix-with-ggally.html

In table 1, add the result of the LSD for mean separation.

The discussion section needs to be adjusted, only discuss the major discovery and how this will be used to improve the production. Also check for english typo across the document

Reviewer #2: The submitted manuscript does not have good theoretical bases on plant reproductive biology as it should have. The presented objectives are very unclear, the methods are not adequate, and the results does not support the conclusions.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-22-19414.pdf

Macroscopic and microscopic study on floral biology and pollinationof Cinnamomum verum Blume (Sri Lankan)

PONE-D-22-19414R1

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,

Muhammad Imran

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

I have thoroughly review the manuscript, all the comments from previous review process have been incorporated as mention our valuable reviewers. Now the manuscript is okay for publication and the decision is Accepted.

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

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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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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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

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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

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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 my comments and the manuscript can be accepted in the current form.

English spelling

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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: Yes: Paterne AGRE

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