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Please the reviewers have only the following correction to suggest:
Lines 74-75 the word "subsequently" is double-repeated. Please remember to correct it in the proof.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Julin Maloof, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
no comment
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I consider the manuscript suitable for publication.
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The authors have answered to all my comments and made all the suggested modifications. Therefore, the paper is now suitable for publication.
I have only the follwing correction to suggest:
Lines 74-75 the word "subsequently" is double-repeated
I have completed my evaluation of your manuscript, which has received two external reviews. Both find your study interesting for the readers of PeerJ. Hence I recommend reconsideration of your manuscript following minor revision. When revising your manuscript, please consider all issues mentioned in the reviewers' comments carefully: please outline every change made in response to their comments and provide suitable rebuttals for any comments not addressed.
[# PeerJ Staff Note: The review process has identified that the English language must be improved. PeerJ can provide language editing services - please contact us at [email protected] for pricing (be sure to provide your manuscript number and title) #]
The manuscript represents an actual and original contribution to the knowledge about Eruca sativa tolerance to abiotic stresses. However, I consider the manuscript suitable for publication only after some revision. Some improvement could be done in the structure of the manuscript and in the way to present and discuss the obtained results. There is need to improve the English language of the manuscript.
Specific comments
Title
- The title gets to the point but is too long. Rephrased.
Introduction
It is detailed, comprehensive, and well presented, based on recent up to date bibliography.
- Line 87: “. Eruca sativa” and check how it is reported throughout the text after the dot.
Materials and Methods
- Line 106: What were controlled conditions in growth chamber? Specify.
Results, figures and tables
- It is difficult to follow the statistics shown in tables, please distinguish the various interactions with upper- and lower-case letters.
- Report the same abbreviation E. sativa in all figure and table captions.
Discussion
The presentation of these section is indeed very extensive to the point that its understanding is problematic. This work is rather interesting but considering the amount of data I suggest rewriting it in some parts making it more fluid to the reader and including more attention in the discussion of the results for the observed species.
Methods described with sufficient detail & information to replicate.
Conclusions are well stated, linked to original research question & limited to supporting results.
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The present paper is an investigation on 25 accessions of Eruca sativa aiming at characterizing them for salt tolerance through the analysis of morphological and physiological traits.
The topic could represent a contribution to the knowledge of traits useful for the screening of salt tolerant accessions. Moreover, some salt tolerant accessions of E. sativa were identified by the authors.
The manuscript is well presented and well written, therefore I consider it suitable for publication after minor revision.
Specific comments for the authors:
Introduction
-Line 55 – The difference between “cultivated” and “irrigated” lands is not much clear, since I suppose that the cultivated lands are also irrigated. The sentence should be reformulated.
-Lines 57-58 – this sentence should be better explained. What the authors mean with “global food security”? Moreover, it is not clear the meaning of “to develop salt tolerance species”. The authors refer to genetically modify the plants or just screening natural tolerant species? Please reformulate the whole sentence.
The same doubt is for lines 71 and line 75 (“developing salt-tolerant genotypes”).
-Lines 88-89 – “Although…. However…”, use only one of the two conjunctions and remove the other one.
Materials and methods
-The authors should specify also in this section (Plant material, growth conditions and salt stress treatment) the number of E. sativa accessions which were investigated. Moreover, the number of control and treated replicates for each accession is never reported. It should be specified in the text.
-Lines 156-157 – The sentence sounds strange since the experiment was conducted in controlled conditions. What the authors mean with “the measurements were conducted in a sunny day”?
-Lines 180-182 – The description of statistical analysis is not much clear to me. The Duncan test was used as post hoc test after two way ANOVA analysis? Was the data-normality tested before?
Results
-All the figures seem to have a low resolution, therefore the quality should be improved.
-In the tables I would use “accessions” instead of “cultivars”
-Figures: letters of statistical analysis results are reported only in fig. 3. It would be useful to show statistics also in all the other graphs.
-Tables: letters of statistical analysis should be reported also for comparison between the total mean of control and treated samples.
-Lines 238-239 – The last sentence is not completely correct. Some of the accessions did not show significant difference between control and salt treatment.
-Lines 265-266 – It is not clear why the authors could not measure gas exchange parameters in Es-7 and 16. What they mean with seed unavailability? Since gas exchange measurements are not-disruptive, the same plants used for the other analyses could have been used before to this aim prior to the final sampling.
Discussion
-In this section the authors should follow the same order and structure followed in Materials and methods and Results. Therefore, the discussion should start with the morphological traits and biomass and the paragraph in lines 360-379 should be moved later in the text.
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