PONE-D-22-35252

Morpho-anatomical determinants of yield potential in Olea europaea L. cultivars belonging to diversified origin grown in semi-arid environments

PLOS ONE

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: No

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 discussion should be enriched and the main text should be edited by a native speaker or professional editing service. The data of this study would be valuable to the related research field and agricultural practice. The authors should review and discuss more related references for this manuscript, maybe 10-20 up-to-date publications can be added to the section of references.

Reviewer #2: This manuscript attempts to characterize some traits of olive cultivars in Pakistan. The works seems to be original, but some improvements need to be done before is suitable for publication.

In the future, please, include numbers in every line of the manuscript for easier review.

Introduction

Paragraph starting by “Olive (Olea europaea L.) is an important oil yielding, medium sized woody and evergreen tree species growing in the Mediterranean region. It has approximately 25 genera and 600 species…” should be placed before mentioning any other work on the olive species.

The sentence “It was hypothesized that internal structure being the main contributor of overall growth should also be contributory elements to yield of studied cultivars” is not fully clear to me. Please, rephrase.

Materials and methods

Manzanilla is a Spanish cultivar and Fs-17 comes from an Italian breeding program.

Subheadings “Experimental conditions and layout of the experiment” and “Growth and yield measurements” should be merged and clarify. First, you have to present the orchard sampled, including the date of plating (2010 I think). And then, describing the sampling strategy. Particularly, it is not clear the way that the yield has been measured. It is compulsory to have a measure of the yield of the whole tree in order to be able to associate with morphological and anatomical traits of the plant.

Considering the sentence “To investigate the anatomical features, olive plants’ root, stem and leaf were separated”, it seems that the full plant was destroyed to gather the root and shoots data, but this is not fully clear. It should also be stated how many branches per tree were analyzed. And if the age of the (one year old, probably if they have fruits). Besides it is not clear how yield was measured. In fact, the sentence “Young stems were collected near the branch apex” it is not clear, and a more extended explanation is needed.

Results

You have to give some data on the environmental conditions of the study site (maximum, minimum and average daily temperature per month and rainfall) and if there is irrigation, indicate the yearly amount of water applied.

At the beginning of Results section, it is indicated that “Plant height did not show any significant difference, which was the maximum in three cultivars Erlik, Hamdi and BARI-2, while the minimum (4.4 m) in the HP Olive and QR Olive cultivars. Trunk circumference showed no significant difference in all cultivars.” However, in Table 1, significant differences for both plant height and trunk circumference are indicated. Please, clarify this and review the rest of the comments of the results section for similar contradictions.

Figures 1 to 4 are not mentioned in text. You should either include in the text or eliminate them.

It would be interesting to know the correlations among morphological and anatomical traits themselves.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Morpho-anatomical determinants of yield potential in Olea europaea L. cultivars belonging to diversified origin grown in semi-arid environments

PONE-D-22-35252R1

Dear Dr. Ahmad,

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,

Rupesh Kailasrao Deshmukh, 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 #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: In my opinion, the manuscript is suitable for publication in its present form. The manuscript is original and all the suggested changes has been incorporated.

Reviewer #3: The authors have addressed all the questions of the reviewers and the manuscript has been improved from the previous version. The present version looks appropriate to be considered for publication.

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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 #2: Yes: Raul de la Rosa

Reviewer #3: No

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