PONE-D-22-10737Comprehensive Evaluation of of High-Oleic Rapeseed (Brassica napus) based on Quality, Resistance, and Yield Traits: A new method for rapid identification of high-oleic acid rapeseed germplasmPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Guan,

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.

Both reviewers recommend minor revisions to this study. The topic area is of interest to PLOS One and Brassica community readers. If the revisions are made appropriately, then resubmission to Plos One would be appropriate. I encourage authors to avoid repetitions. Detailed comments are attached. High chlorophyll and erucic acid in rapeseed oil are not desirable traits.

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PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Both reviewers recommend minor revisions to this study. The topic area is of interest to PLOS One and Brassica community readers. If the revisions are made appropriately, then resubmission to Plos One would be appropriate. I encourage authors to avoid repetitions. Detailed comments are attached.

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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: 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: 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: The paper is technically sound. There are some minor grammatical errors and some questions regarding results and conclusion. Some of the statements make assumptions that are not based on the data reported. These issues should be addressed prior to publication.

Reviewer #2: This manuscript aims to show a method of statistical evaluation for selection of rapeseed germplasm, although the title doesn't say that explicitly.

The title should be more descriptive of the methodology. The existing title also has grammatical errors.

I have several concerns about the conclusions drawn from the results which I will outlay. But firstly, I am concerned that several references, of which there are an excessive amount, often don't appear to be relevant to the particular discussion. For example, ref. 2-3 is in relation to essential fatty acids but it is in fact about fungicide application. Ref. 5-6 is about cardiovascular benefits but refers to biodiesel and batch reactors? References from 1-31 and others have dubious connections to the related text. The overall number of references can be reduced.

The paper uses 12 indices for the analysis. It is questionable as to the importance of these 12 parameters. Although oleic acid, yield and disease resistance are imported, I am not sure of the need to select for some of the other minor fatty acids. A reduction in traits will significantly improve the clarity of the correlations.

The pages are not numbered so I have presumed the numbering is as they appear on my computer.

Pg. 2, 2nd line, "hit in the throat" needs to be replaced with more acceptable grammar.

Pg. 2, 1st line, 3rd para: should say 'carried out "extensive" work'

Pg 2, 5th para: "During the "decomposition" period" I don't know what the decomposition period is?

Test Methods: It appears 10 plants were selected for analysis but test material consisted of 30 plants. Please explain this better.

Pg 2, last line: rapeseed plants are not "rapes"

Fig. 1: This is hard to read and poorly organised. Improve the labelling and sort the bars so that fatty acids are together, separate from crude protein, etc.

Pg. 5: Fatty acids are percentages of 6 FAs but there are several more. Why are only 6 used to calculate percentage?

Pg. 6, 2nd para: The text is repetitive. You do not need to repeat "This composition mainly reflected ...etc."

Para 3.5: I am not sure of the purpose of this data. The formulas don't seem to help me select new germplasm.

Pages 4-10 show multiple statistical analysis of the data and I don't think it is justified. In fact, Figure 5, hierarchical cluster analysis, is not even discussed within the text. If it is not discussed, or is not necessary, it should be removed. Perhaps the relationships could have been described with less statistical methodology.

The Discussion, page 10-12 shows some limitation to the authors knowledge of rapeseed. Pg 10, 2nd para suggests "previous studies have focussed on yield and not quality" which is totally wrong. The earliest research on Brassica napus was to reduce erucic acid and glucosinolates. From there, oil content was a primary focus. Quality was always a main aim.

It is stated that "for the first time it was shown a negative correlation between oil and protein. This is wrong as correlation between oil and protein has been the subject of multiple publications and scientific presentations for many years. Furthermore, the correlation between chlorophyll and yield is questionable. High concentrations of chlorophyll indicate immature seeds and if allowed to mature, the chlorophyll will disappear. The reasons for green oil are that crops don't reach maturity before they are harvested.

Pg 11: Conclusion. Last line: I don't imagine that "increasing erucic acid to improve yield" would be an acceptable breeding strategy, considering erucic acid is one of the quality limitations of rapeseed.

There are a few grammatical errors:

Pg. 2, para 4: "well-suited to"...;

Pg 2, para 4: "rapeseed oil into high-oleic oil".

There may be others

Overall, I think the manuscript is reasonably well written and with some revision it is publishable. My recommendations are to consider if the wide range of statistical analyses is justified or could the same picture be drawn from a reduced set of select methods? I don't believe the number of references are justified and, where they are used, they must be clearly related to the discussion to which they are referenced. All of the references listed need to be referred to in the text.

I would recommend publication after these factors are dealt with. ality limitations of rapeseed.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Dr R.J. Mailer

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Manuscript JA edits.docx

Comprehensive Evaluation of of High-Oleic Rapeseed (Brassica napus) based on Quality, Resistance, and Yield Traits: A new method for rapid identification of high-oleic acid rapeseed germplasm

PONE-D-22-10737R1

Dear Dr. Guan,

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,

Harsh Raman, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Thanks for the revisions made

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

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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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: The authors appear to have complied with reviewer suggestions. I have some minor suggestions for improvement to grammar and presentation:

Line 67-70: I suggest - "This research was conducted in the large rapeseed producing area of Hunan Province. Transforming traditional rapeseed oil into high oleic oil could provide substantial economic and nutritional benefits to 61 million people in the province".

Line 115: replace rapes with rape, rapeseed or rapeseed cultivars.

Line 126: Figure 1 is still not clear on my copy and the numbers on the graph need to be made clearer.

Line 398: Reference 21 needs to be formatted

My suggestions for future research would be to conduct similar studies in variable environments and over successive years of variable climate to see how the relationships hold under greater quality, disease and yield fluctuations.

Additional Comments: The limitations to this work are that the study has been carried out at one site in one year. To look at the characteristics in more detail, and the relationship of one to another (i.e. protein and oil) I would think this needs to be expanded to include multiple years and sites in future studies.

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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: Dr. RJ Mailer

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