PONE-D-23-11250

Salinity and nitrogen source affect productivity and nutritional value of edible halophytes

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Barkla,

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PLOS ONE

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PONE-D-23-11250R1Salinity and nitrogen source affect productivity and nutritional value of edible halophytesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Barkla,

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.

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The authors are advised to revise the manuscript thoroughly especially by addressing the proactive comments of the 1^st reviewer. Moreover, authors need to justify why they have conducted two experiments and how these experiments complement each other to achieve the goal of the study? A hypothesis should be added in the introduction to justify accepting or rejecting the findings of the research study. The manuscript needs to be thoroughly edited.  

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Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 10 2023 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,

Khandakar R. Islam, Ph.D.

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)

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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: No

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

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: Yes

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: The article titled “Salinity and nitrogen source affect productivity and nutritional value of edible halophytes” by Bronwyn et. al. is a unique piece of research and have merits of its own. However, as per observation of the reviewer, there are some queries about this article along with some decent scopes of modifications which need to be addressed as follows-

1. Please reframe the abstract by adding research methodologies and treatment combinations in brief. Only show key results in the abstract that are conclusive towards research objectives. Please also mention full forms of the abbreviations used, then use abbreviations in the text or abstract.

2. Please also mention in the abstract that there are two sets of experiments in this research, along with their treatment combinations and methodologies.

3. Please point out why there are two experiments in this research? Mention the research objectives clearly at the end of the introduction section (in relevance to the two sets of experiments). Please also mention which experiment fulfils which objective/s and how they interrelate with each other in terms of a conclusive remarks to this research.

4. Please mention the meteorological characteristics of the experimental site/s, along with the primary (before sowing) characteristics of the planting materials and irrigation water, especially in terms of soluble salt contents.

5. Please also mention growth phase duration and timeline for the plants under both of the experiments as well as growth phases and/or point of data collection for both plant and soil.

6. Please explain the rationale to harvest plat shoots at or near flowering stage (in line number 137).

7. Please mention the version of R-software.

8. Please arrange the entire result section objective wise.

9. Elaborate the Discussion section at least to satisfy the objectives. It is highly suggestive that the authors discuss each objective and at the end interrelate them to a conclusive remark.

10. Please explain tables and figures within the text. There are barely some mentions of those in the text.

Reviewer #2: The authors are hereby referred to the reviewer comments attached to this review. I recommend acceptance pending the minor issues highlighted in those comments.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Dr. PRAVAT UTPAL ACHARJEE

Reviewer #2: No

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[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.]

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: review notes.docx

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review PONE-D-23-11250R1.docx

Salinity and nitrogen source affect productivity and nutritional value of edible halophytes

PONE-D-23-11250R2

Dear Dr. Barkla,

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,

Khandakar R. Islam, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: