PONE-D-23-42629Analyzing Cold Hardiness (Based on DTA) of One-Year-Old Branches of PeachesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Li,

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PLOS ONE

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This work was supported by Key Laboratory of Biology and Genetic Improvement of Horticultural Crops (Germplasm Resources Utilization), Ministry of Agriculture,P.R.China (No. NYZS202305) and Technology Innovation Special Project of Hebei Academy (No. 2022KJCXZX-CGS-6), Key R&D Projects of Hebei Province (No. 21326310D), Modern Agricultural Industrial Technology System of Hebei Province (No. HBCT2023130205) and China Agriculture Research System of MOF and MARA (No. CARS-30-Z-02).

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This work was supported by Key Laboratory of Biology and Genetic Improvement of Horticultural Crops (Germplasm Resources Utilization), Ministry of Agriculture,P.R.China (No. NYZS202305) and Technology Innovation Special Project of Hebei Academy (No. 2022KJCXZX-CGS-6), Key R&D Projects of Hebei Province (No. 21326310D), Modern Agricultural Industrial Technology System of Hebei Province (No. HBCT2023130205) and China Agriculture Research System of MOF and MARA (No. CARS-30-Z-02).

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This work was supported by Key Laboratory of Biology and Genetic Improvement of Horticultural Crops (Germplasm Resources Utilization), Ministry of Agriculture,P.R.China (No. NYZS202305) and Technology Innovation Special Project of Hebei Academy (No. 2022KJCXZX-CGS-6), Key R&D Projects of Hebei Province (No. 21326310D), Modern Agricultural Industrial Technology System of Hebei Province (No. HBCT2023130205) and China Agriculture Research System of MOF and MARA (No. CARS-30-Z-02).

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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: 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: Comments

The authors selected Wangjiazhuangmaotao No.2, Zhongnongjinhui, and Chunmei as three representative varieties with strong, moderate, and weak cold hardiness ranks to determine EI and BR. However, Table 3 showed that Zhongnongjinhui and Chunmei are both medium cold-hardiness (MH) variety. In the subsequent results, there was a difference in data of BR between Zhongnongjinhui and Chunmei, both of which were MH variety. Does this indicat that the identification of cold hardness through LTE investment of is not as precise? Please explain in detail.

Minor points

1. Please review the manuscript for punctuation errors throughout the text, e.g. line 88 "... electrical leakage (EI)]".

2. Please review the manuscript for the consistency of font size, e.g. line 96 "A total of …", and line 164 "…hardiness…".

3. Please carefully check the reference format and ensure consistency, e.g. line 346 "Am. J. Enol. Vitic", and line 352 "Annals of Botany".

Reviewer #2: In this manuscript, the authors demonstrated the validity of LTE analysis for cold hardiness of peach branches by analyzing the exothermic behavior, brown rates, and the electrolytic leakage of one-year-old branches of sixteen peach cultivars under low temperature conditions. This work could be accepted after minor revisions. Other questions were shown below:

1. There are multiple formatting errors throughout the manuscript, such as the incorrect use of spaces in lines 34, 66, 74, 77, etc.

2. Line 80: "the LTE determination method involved cutting" should not be formatted in bold.

3. Fig 1: Graphing error, there is no point C in the diagram.

4. Line 140: “There” should be “there”.

5. Line 256: An “of” should be removed.

6. Line 260: “wiht” should be “with”.

7. Line 278: “siince” should be “since”.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review comments.docx

PONE-D-23-42629R1Analyzing Cold Hardiness (Based on DTA) of One-Year-Old Branches of PeachesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Tian,

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 12 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,

Guanfu Fu, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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:

According to the comments, many misspellings were still found in the manuscript. it could be accepted after careful checking.

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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 #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 #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: N/A

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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 #3: (No Response)

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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

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

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 #3: The revised manuscript provided by Li et al. has revised and respond correctly to comments from both former reviewers.

However, there is one more comment need to be amended. I found that the authors mentioned “Huangjinmi No.1” in the Abstract section of the manuscript, but I cannot find any related information about “Huangjinmi No.1” in the other sections of the manuscript. So please double check whether this is a typo of “Golden honey No. 1” (as I have read it in the Results section but not mentioned in the Abstract section) and amend the fault. I suggest the manuscript could be accepted after this fault being fixed.

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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 #3: No

**********

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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.

Analyzing Cold Hardiness (Based on DTA) of One-Year-Old Branches of Peaches

PONE-D-23-42629R2

Dear Dr. Qihang Tian

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,

Guanfu Fu, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: