A Seed Coating Delivery System for Bio-Based Biostimulants to Enhance Plant Growth
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
As mentioned before, the manuscript are clearly written conclusions are clearly presented, which provide useful information for future related application. I do not have concerns about the methods and conclusions of this manuscript.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1
Point 1: “As mentioned before, the manuscript are clearly written conclusions are clearly presented, which provide useful information for future related application. I do not have concerns about the methods and conclusions of this manuscript.”
Response 1:The author thanks Reviewer #1for the valuable and positive feedback on our first and the current revised draft of this manuscript.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This is an interesting paper and I have really no comments.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2
Point 1: “This is an interesting paper and I have really no comments.”
Response 1:Authors of this manuscript appreciate the positive feedback from Reviewer #2.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper falls within general scope of the journal. However, the manuscript can be accepted after major revision.
Why this genotype was chosen for the experiment?
Plant growth conditions, especially light conditions (PPFD???), are not described, please add.
What constituted a replicate? Were measurements based on one leaf/seed or one group of leaves/seeds?
Results should be separated from Discussion. It is not clear what are authors' personal results and what is the citation of results of other authors.
The discussion needs to also include the limitations of this study and further experiments to answer important questions resulting from this study. Are there any implications for future research?
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3
We would like to thank the Reviewer #3for careful and detailed reading of our manuscript and for the thoughtful comments and constructive suggestions, which help to improve the quality of this manuscript. Our response (in red) follows (the reviewer’s points are in “italics”).
Point 1: “Why this genotype was chosen for the experiment?”
Response 1:Several reasons why we used broccoli for this study:
Broccoli is a high value vegetable cropand the cultivar ‘Durapak’ is commonly available in North America. Because of the early growth response of this crop to the seed coating as a delivery system that was documented in an earlier report from our lab. Also due to availability of a large quantity of these expensive seeds which were donated to this Lab for this research on biostimulants.
Point 2: “Plant growth conditions, especially light conditions (PPFD???), are not described, please add.”
Response 2:Growth condition of plants explained between lines 168-174 and an average value of Photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) of 470 μmol m−2 s−1 added to lines 170-171. Text highlighted in green.
Point 3: “What constituted a replicate? Were measurements based on one leaf/seed or one group of leaves/seeds?”
Response 3:the number of replicates and what constituted a replicate was described for each Table listed below.
Table 2: Weight Loss (WL %) [replications and sample size added to line 119] and Disintegration Time (DT min) [replications and sample size added to line 125] are based on group of seeds, however Compressive Strength (Force N) and Time to Decay (TD s) are based on 10 replications of single seeds.
Table 3, 4 and 5:Total germination (Gmax%), germination uniformity (GU: T90-T10), germination rate (T50) and Seedling Vigor Index, were measured based on a group of seeds and seedlings and 4 replicate of 50 seeds. However, shoot and root length and seedling dry weight were measured based on 4 replicates of individual plants of 50 seedlings in total 200 seedling per treatments.
Table 6:The following measurements are based on an individual plant (sample): Shoot height, Shoot Dry weight, Root length, Root Dry weight, Total Leaf Area, Leaf number, Growth Index and SPAD were measured for each plant. However, Plant vigor index were calculated based on a group of planted seeds since emergence% is part of the equation.
Point 4: Results should be separated from Discussion. It is not clear what are authors' personal results and what is the citation of results of other authors.
Response 4:According to the author instruction of Sustainability MDPI journal, authors can combine the Results and Discussion. Therefore, we will keep the manuscript in its current format. However, as suggested by the reviewer, we have reviewed carefully the entire section 3 and have edited and clarified the results of current study and cited articles as shown in the revised manuscript highlighted in green text: Line 242-244, Line 255-258, Line 354, Line 360, Line 460-461, and Line 463.
Point 5: The discussion needs to also include the limitations of this study and further experiments to answer important questions resulting from this study. Are there any implications for future research?
Response 5:Line 521-525 explains implications for future research.
Additional reason for future research added to the lines 523-524.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This manuscript was mainly about development of a delivery method to investigate biostimulant on plant growth. The manuscript are clearly written, experiment designs are reasonable and conclusions are clearly presented, which provide useful information for future related application. I do not have concerns about the methods and conclusions of this manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
In this article “Seed Coating Delivery System for Bio-based Biostimulants to Enhance Plant Growth” Amirkhani and coworkers show results of germination, seedling vigor index and nitrogen uptake in seeds that were coated using different combinations of micronized vermicompost (MVC) and soy flour (SF). This manuscript is well written and clearly exposes the results and conclusions of a good experimental design. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it lacks much novelty comparing with the published for the same authors three years ago (Amirkhani et al., 2016) and I think it should not be published in a journal with an impact factor similar to “sustainability”. The addition of MVC to the SF coating does not greatly improve neither germination nor biometric parameters. In addition, the authors make a great effort measuring many parameters but omit the most important part of broccoli for farmers, flowering head and stalk.
-Amirkhani, M.; Netravali, A.N.; Huang, W.; Taylor, A.G. Investigation of soy protein-based biostimulant seed coating for broccoli seedling and plant growth enhancement. HortScience 2016 51, 1121–1126.
