PONE-D-24-08353Factors Affecting Onion Production: an Empirical Study in the Raya Kobo District, Amhara Regional State, EthiopiaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zegeye,

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Sumit Jangra, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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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: 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: Factors Affecting Onion Production: an Empirical Study in the Raya Kobo District,

Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia

Reviewer comments:

The overall structure of the paper needs improvement. The abstract part is shallow and lacks the research gap and others. The introduction does not provide a clear roadmap for the study, and the flow of ideas throughout the paper is not well organized.

The methodology section lacks sufficient detail on the data collection process, sample size, and sampling techniques. It's important to provide a clear understanding of how the data was gathered and analyzed.

The choice of statistical methods should be justified more thoroughly. Were there any alternative methods considered, and if so, why were they not chosen?

The paper lacks a discussion on data quality and potential biases in the dataset. It's crucial to assess the reliability of the data and discuss any limitations that might affect the study's findings.

The theoretical literature review is essential to provide a more comprehensive overview of the existing literature, including recent developments in the field.

The paper introduces a theoretical framework, but it's not well-integrated with the research questions or hypotheses. The authors should clarify how the theoretical framework guides the study.

The results are presented in a somewhat fragmented manner. The authors should consider reorganizing them to make the findings more coherent and easier to follow.

The discussion of results is relatively brief and lacks critical analysis. The authors should investigate deeper into the implications of their findings and relate them to the existing literature.

The conclusion is somewhat abrupt and doesn't provide a robust summary of the paper's main contributions and their implications for policy and practice. A more detailed discussion of policy recommendations is needed.

The paper contains several grammatical and stylistic errors. The authors should carefully proofread and edit the manuscript for clarity and consistency.

These comments should help the authors improve their paper by addressing key aspects of clarity, abstract, introduction, methodology, literature review, theoretical framework, results, discussion, recommendation, and overall presentation.

Reviewer #2: Coherence is lacking among the structured Abstract, Result and discussion, Conclusion and recommendations. Likewise, the author mentioned supply chain in abstract, while value chain and sustainability in conclusion and recommendations. These are different three domains, While the study investigated only factors affecting onion production according to the drawn conceptual framework in the Figure 1.

Secondly, author mentioned onion farmers' constraints including pot-harvest handling in section 3.1 paragrapg#3 of results & discussions. While the same problem is not discussed in section 3.4 entitled major constraints of onion farmers in study area.

Thirdly, study defined about post-harvest losses on section 4. it's not previously discussed anywhere.

Fourthly, according to the defined study, by minimizing the onion farmers' constraints, farmers' well-being may improve, crop yield may increase that may impact sectoral growth. But will not stronger the value chain or its' sustainability as defined in the last paragraph.

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6. 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.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Azhar Rasool

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review Report.docx

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-24-08353.pdf

PONE-D-24-08353R1Factors affecting onion production: an empirical study in the Raya Kobo district, Amhara regional state, Ethiopia​PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zegeye,

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 Jul 01 2024 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,

Sumit Jangra, 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.

Additional Editor Comments:

Accepted with minor revision

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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: All comments have been addressed

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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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 #1: Yes

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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: Factors affecting onion production: an empirical study in the Raya Kobo district, Amhara regional state, Ethiopia

The authors address most of the issues raised. But, still it needs some modifications (like abstract part, the study area, and others have been given comments on manuscripts).

Reviewer #2: The authors addressed each comment/observation and the attached the revised manuscript have been accepted for further proceedings.

Reviewer #3: 1.On the introduction section, if The Amhara Region contributes around 50% of the national onion production, why onion production is low compared to other region?

2.If Raya Kobo district is recognized as a major onion producer in Amhara region, it is better to support this sentence with empirical evidence.

3.The types of onion seeds are one of the determinants of onion production by itself, how do you see this?

4.Add the map of the study area.

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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: No

Reviewer #3: 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.]

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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Azhar_Rasool (Response Sheet).pdf

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-24-08353_R1.pdf

Attachment

Submitted filename: Factors affecting onion production.docx

Factors affecting onion production: an empirical study in the Raya Kobo district, Amhara regional state, Ethiopia​

PONE-D-24-08353R2

Dear Dr. Zegeye,

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.

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Kind regards,

Sumit Jangra, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: