Plant Defensive Responses Triggered by Trichoderma spp. as Tools to Face Stressful Conditions
and Mariana Saucedo-GarcÃa *
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a very interesting, well-written and well-organized review that will appeal to readers of horticulture. Meanwhile, understanding how Trichoderma activates defenses will help make good use of this genus and has important implications for the development of sustainable agriculture. However, I think there are some improvements to be made in this review.
1. Please reposition Figure 1 to make it easier to read. Maybe you can place it in the middle of the 2. and 3. sections.
2. Table 3 --'JA/ET-homoglutathione synthetase...' The letter ‘H’ should be capitalized.
3. Line 95: 'has been' or 'have been'? Please check.
4. Line 115/135/166: Does the word 'Trichoderma' need a underline？Please check.
5. The English presentations of the manuscript should be reviewed.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your efforts and useful comments about our manuscript. We are very grateful and appreciate your good comments which help us to make the paper more quality and accurate. We responded to all the comments and heighted the changes in the manuscript, so anyone can follow the corrections. We have modified the manuscript accordingly, and the detailed corrections are listed below point by point.
Point 1: Please reposition Figure 1 to make it easier to read. Maybe you can place it in the middle of the 2. and 3. sections.
Response 1: Thank you for pointing that out. The figure 1 was replaced on page 5 to make it easier to read.
Point 2: Table 3 --'JA/ET-homoglutathione synthetase...' The letter ‘H’ should be capitalized.
Response 2: The letter H was capitalized.
Point 3: Line 95: 'has been' or 'have been'? Please check.
Response 3: Have been is the correct form, but the sentence was modified (line 112-114).
Point 4: Line 115/135/166: Does the word 'Trichoderma' need a underline？Please check.
Response 4: We delete the underlining of the word Trichoderma in the titles of subsections.
Point 5: The English presentations of the manuscript should be reviewed.
Response 5: The English of the manuscript was reviewed.
Please see the attachment with the corrected version
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript, entitled: "Plant defensive responses triggered by Trichoderma spp. as tools to face stressful conditions", deals with a rather complicated issue. The authors undertake the difficult task of summarizing the plant physiological effects of Trichoderma species causing biostimulation and initiated resistance.
Today's agricultural production faces many challenges. Under unfavorable environmental conditions, it is necessary to produce more and better quality food for the ever-increasing human population of the earth, while expectations related to the protection of the environment are also increasing.
The manuscript shows basically adequate analytical and evaluation work. The references adequately support the authors' conclusions and findings.
However, in order to improve the professional quality of the manuscript, I suggest some minor modifications:
1. In order to improve clarity, I recommend providing a list of plant physiology acronyms (abbreviations) used in the manuscript at the beginning of the text (e.g. after the keywords point).
2. I recommend writing the full scientific name of the examined plant in the text (e.g. L. japonicus in line 333).
3. Tables 1., 2. and 4. are inconsistent in that they do not uniformly use the scientific names of the test plants. There are places where the full name is written, and there are only abbreviated forms. In the case of these tables, I recommend using the abbreviated scientific plant names, which I recommend writing out in full in the explanation (legend) section.
4. I also recommend including the full list of scientific plant names in the legend of Table 3.
5. The numbering of the main chapter 3 is incorrect (chapter 3.6 is completely missing).
6. The elaboration and scope of the chapter 3.5."Effects of Trichoderma in choroplasts ultrastructure" and chapter 3.7."Induction of programmed cell death by Trichoderma" (despite the extensive professional literature available) are not satisfactory.
After implementing the minor modifications suggested above, I recommend publishing the manuscript in the form of a scientific article.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your efforts and useful comments about our manuscript. We are very grateful and appreciate your good comments which help us to make the paper more quality and accurate. We responded to all the comments and heighted the changes in the manuscript, so anyone can follow the corrections. We have modified the manuscript accordingly, and the detailed corrections are listed below point by point.
Point 1: In order to improve clarity, I recommend providing a list of plant physiology acronyms (abbreviations) used in the manuscript at the beginning of the text (e.g. after the keywords point).
Response 1: Thank you for pointing that out. We have added a list of plant physiology acronyms (abbreviations) used in the manuscript after key words.
Point 2: I recommend writing the full scientific name of the examined plant in the text (e.g. L. japonicus in line 333).
Response 2: We wrote the full scientific name of the same plant in the line 156. For this reason we abbreviate the genus name. We consider that by writing the full names in the explanation (legend) sections, as you suggested in the next point, would help to readers to identify the multiple scientific names of the plants mentioned in the manuscript.
Point 3: Tables 1., 2. and 4. are inconsistent in that they do not uniformly use the scientific names of the test plants. There are places where the full name is written, and there are only abbreviated forms. In the case of these tables, I recommend using the abbreviated scientific plant names, which I recommend writing out in full in the explanation (legend) section.
Response 3: We wrote the abbreviated scientific names of the tested plants in the tables and the full names in the legends (see Tables 1-4).
Point 4: I also recommend including the full list of scientific plant names in the legend of Table 3.
Response 4: The suggestion was done.
Point 5: The numbering of the main chapter 3 is incorrect (chapter 3.6 is completely missing).
Response 5: Thank you for your comment. The numbering of the chapter 3 has been corrected.
Point 6: The elaboration and scope of the chapter 3.5."Effects of Trichoderma in choroplasts ultrastructure" and chapter 3.7."Induction of programmed cell death by Trichoderma" (despite the extensive professional literature available) are not satisfactory.
Response 5: Thank you for your comment. We enhanced the content of the chapter 3.5 and we merged 3.7 with 3.5.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors in the current review elaborately described the plant defense responses and its associated signaling molecules, enzymes, and gene induction due to Trichoderma spp. treatment. This review will be beneficial in the future for developing effective biofertilizers and biocontrol agents using Trichoderma spp. to mitigate abiotic and biotic stress. However, I have a few minor comments to strengthen before publishing this review.
In line 72, the authors did not add a full stop afterword "spp." Consider adding a full stop and carefully check the entire manuscript for this type of mistake.
Line 103, instead of "Defense responses activation during early stages of plant-Trichoderma interaction," the authors can make this more straightforward and easier to read like, Defense responses at early stages of plant-Trichoderma interaction.
Section 3 title needs to be grammatically correct; the authors should consider rewriting the title of section 3.
Section 3.5 is not required or could be combined with section 3.7.
Section 3.6 is missing in the manuscript. Is this a mistake, or the authors forgot to whole 3.6 section?
Figure 1 quality is not suitable for the journal standard; hard to read and blurry. Consider providing higher-quality figures to meet the journal's requirements.
There are errors in formatting references in the reference list. For example, references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 33 published years were not bold. Consider formatting the references that are not according to the author's gumlines.
Below are the links to a few related references. The authors should consider citing them.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11104-015-2436-2
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10725-014-0008-8
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2452219817300320
Punctuation marks and article usage
The authors used unnecessary "commas" and forgot to add "commas" where necessary throughout the manuscript; consider revising carefully.
In an entire manuscript, the authors did not use the article correctly, so consider revising the whole manuscript very carefully. I also found several grammatical errors throughout the manuscripts; consider correcting them.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your efforts and useful comments about our manuscript. We are very grateful and appreciate your good comments which help us to make the paper more quality and accurate. We responded to all the comments and heighted the changes in the manuscript, so anyone can follow the corrections. We have modified the manuscript accordingly, and the detailed corrections are listed below point by point.
Point 1: In line 72, the authors did not add a full stop afterword "spp." Consider adding a full stop and carefully check the entire manuscript for this type of mistake.
Response 1: Thank you for pointing that out. We have incopororated a full stop afterword spp. in the lines 72 and 211. We checked the entire manuscript for this type of mistake.
Point 2: Line 103, instead of "Defense responses activation during early stages of plant-Trichoderma interaction," the authors can make this more straightforward and easier to read like, Defense responses at early stages of plant-Trichoderma interaction.
Response 2: Thank you for your comment. The tittle of the subsection was modified (line 103) as you rightly suggested.
Point 3: Section 3 title needs to be grammatically correct; the authors should consider rewriting the title of section 3.
Response 3: Section 3 tittles have been modified.
Point 4: Section 3.5 is not required or could be combined with section 3.7.
Response 4: Thank you for your comment. We enhanced the content of the chapter 3.5 and we merged 3.7 with 3.5.
Point 5: Section 3.6 is missing in the manuscript. Is this a mistake, or the authors forgot to whole 3.6 section?
Response 5: Thank you for pointing that out. It was a mistake.
Point 6: Figure 1 quality is not suitable for the journal standard; hard to read and blurry. Consider providing higher-quality figures to meet the journal's requirements.
Response 6: The figure 1 has been replaced by another with higher quality.
Point 7: There are errors in formatting references in the reference list. For example, references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 33 published years were not bold. Consider formatting the references that are not according to the author's gumlines.
Below are the links to a few related references. The authors should consider citing them.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11104-015-2436-2
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10725-014-0008-8
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2452219817300320
Response 7: Thank you for the comment. However, according with Reference formatting guide, the references for books and book chapters should be describe as follows
- References to books should cite the author(s), title, publisher, publisher location (city and country), publication year, and page:
- Smith, A.B. Textbook of Organic Chemistry; D. C. Jones: New York, NY, USA, 1961; pp 123-126.
The years of the published books or book chapters are not bold-
While for Journal references we must cite as follows
- Bowman, C.M.; Landee, F.A.; Reslock, M.A. Chemically Oriented Storage and Retrieval System. 1. Storage and Verification of Structural Information. J. Chem. Doc. 1967, 7, 43-47; DOI:10.1021/c160024a013.
Where the years of the published papers are bold,
Point 8: Punctuation marks and article usage. The authors used unnecessary "commas" and forgot to add "commas" where necessary throughout the manuscript; consider revising carefully.
In an entire manuscript, the authors did not use the article correctly, so consider revising the whole manuscript very carefully. I also found several grammatical errors throughout the manuscripts; consider correcting them.
The English of the manuscript was reviewed
Please see the attachment with the corrected version
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
