PONE-D-21-06519

Gender, Caste, and Farmer Preference for Wheat Varietal Traits in Rural India

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Krishna,

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Rosalyn B. Angeles-Shim, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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: No

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: 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 paper sets out to assess the preferences of central Indian farmers towards wheat varieties with a special attention to differences among gender and castes. Following an initial ranking exercise, a choice experiment involving five traits (heat tolerance, chapati quality, lodging, seed price and yield) is conducted; results are analysed through a mixed logit model correcting for attribute non-attention).

The paper makes some valuable contributions to studying farmers' preferences for varietal traits. Although the main analysis seems sounds, the presentation is not optimal leading to confusion. There are also some claims in the discussion that seem either unsupported by the data or vague/disconnected. I made several suggestions to clarify and sharpen the discussion but none of these are insurmountable. I highlighted the major comments in yellow.

See more details in the review report attached

Reviewer #2: The different parts of the manuscript are mixed. There are some results in the methodology section and some discussions in the results sections. Authors did first a ranking exercise followed by a household survey. However, the link between the two parts is not clear. How the ranking has informed the experimental choice exercise need to be clarified.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review report.pdf

Attachment

Submitted filename: Reviewer_Report_PONE-D-21-06519.pdf

PONE-D-21-06519R1Gender, Caste, and Heterogeneous Farmer Preferences for Wheat Varietal Traits in Rural IndiaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Krishna,

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 May 28 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,

Rosalyn B. Angeles-Shim, PhD

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: (No Response)

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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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: 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

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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

**********

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: The authors clearly improved the manuscript and added additional information. However, some ambiguity remains and should be addressed before the paper can be considered for publication.

Section 3

• I am still confused by the data sampling process. You say you rely on a previously conducted CIMMYT study, but a number of things are missing:

o Reference to this study (even if only to a working paper)

o What kind of information is used from this CIMMYT study? You explain a sampling strategy but it is unclear whether you or the CIMMYT study has done this. You also seem to refer to households and the "2018 respondent list", but later on, you refer to "after completing a census of farm households": why is this census needed and when was it conducted.

o You also state that "we excluded the first-round dataset from the main analysis" but later on add that "We supplement Table 3 with data on gendered participation in wheat varietal selection, using the 2018 survey data". This seems contradictory.

• The sentence "The social norms that vary across the caste 35 groups could influence the gender relations in farm production." Is redundant.

• Eq. 1, 2, 5 and 6 seems not strictly necessary: the most important is to show your final formula to be estimated (Eq. 3-4) and how the WTP is calculated (ratio of trait coefficient over seed price coefficient). The use of too many Greek symbols is lowering the readability. Also, p. 16 (manuscript numbering) lines 9-10 seems to contradict line 18: are the parameters assumed random or not?

Section 4

• "In our survey, the male respondents also did not acknowledge the role of women members": what does this mean and does this apply to every single male respondent in the entire sample?

• Table 4: " inter-group equality": male vs female, SCST vs other castes?

• P 19 l 7-8: "There exists significant preference heterogeneity within the gender groups, as shown by the statistically significant standard deviation parameter for most of the traits.": this seems confusing for two reasons:

o I only see a difference in standard deviation for chapati quality, so the statement seems an overgeneralisation

o "preference heterogeneity within the gender groups" is also confusing; it might be more accurate to say something like: Female respondents expressed a significantly higher variability in preference for high Chapati quality than male respondents, and oppositely for medium Chapati quality.

• P19 l 17-19: "The results show that the effect of excluding this minority, and therefore the effect of ANA, is highly pronounced in the preference estimates of all traits included in the choice experiment.": the term highly pronounced seems exaggerated: only high Chapati quality, high lodging tolerance and ASC is significantly affected.

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If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Bert Lenaerts

[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.

Gender, Caste, and Heterogeneous Farmer Preferences for Wheat Varietal Traits in Rural India

PONE-D-21-06519R2

Dear Dr. Krishna,

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,

Rosalyn B. Angeles-Shim, PhD

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

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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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: 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

**********

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

**********

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: No more comments, everything seems resolved. I want to congratulate the authors for their continued effort in improving the paper.

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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: Bert Lenaerts

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