Efficacy of Post-Emergence Herbicides against Important Weeds of Sugarcane in North-East Thailand
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
The comments and suggestions for necessary corrections can be found in the attached manuscript text. I hope it will contribute to the quality of your work.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Please see the attachment.
Sincerely,
Santimaitree Gonkhamdee, Ph.D.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Research on the effectiveness of herbicides and their phytotoxicity to the crop is very important for agricultural practice. Such experiments should be conducted especially for plants of high economic importance, which include sugar cane. Therefore, I believe that the results presented in the manuscript are important and worth publishing. Unfortunately, there are many unclear fragments in the current form, therefore the text requires significant corrections before publication.
Title
Herbicides affect the effectiveness of weed control, the current form of the title is, it was weeds that determined the effectiveness of herbicides. Please edit the title.
Abstract
Lines 21 - 22: A sentence may be added that the method of weed control should be adapted to the weed species. However, the sentence "Subsequently, farmers are advised to survey weed species present in their fields before determining the most suitable weed control product and method." sounds as if the research results have contributed nothing to agricultural practice, because farmers still have to determine everything themselves.
Keywords
The words "recovery; overdose" are unprofessional to keywords. I suggest adding "phytotoxicity".
Introduction
Line 63 - please add information about the mode of action of the selected herbicides, how they affect plants.
Materials and Methods; Results
- Line 91 - what do the terms "weedy and weed-free treatments" mean? Failure to specify them prevents the correct interpretation of the results, which is an important problem in this manuscript. All combinations where herbicides have been used should be compared to controls where weeds were not controlled. Does this apply to "weedy treatments"? If so, the results showing more weeds for the "weedy" than for the herbicidal treatments (tables 3, 4) undermine the correctness of the experiment. Only after explaining this statement will it be possible to take a factual approach to the analysis of the results.
- The phrase "Sugarcane toxicity" is incorrect. It is the herbicides that cause the toxicity, not the crops. Plants can be damaged by herbicides. This applies to the entire text.
- F-test - many results show "ns". Are the Authors sure that the statistical analyzes have been performed correctly?
- Figures, tables, discussion of results - results should be presented for the DAA, not for the DAP.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Please see the attachment.
Sincerely,
Santimaitree Gonkhamdee, Ph.D.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx