Identification of High-Yielding Soybean Lines with Exceptional Seed Composition Qualities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

With interest  I  read Your article.  Overall goal is valuable, but I would expect some added value using MAS or new QTL mapping.

Outcomming plant material might be valuable for breeders, but should be better described and evaluated (e.g. diseases, compare the environments etc.)

I made some remarks to the manuscript. 

I suggest to publish the data as a short communication.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

grammar more or less correct, but the soundness is missing

Author Response

Thank you for your comments and suggestions to our manuscript. We have prepared the following changes and responses to each of the comments as follows:

Overall goal is valuable, but I would expect some added value using MAS or new QTL mapping.

We determined the populations we used for this study would be unsuitable for a QTL mapping experiment as the number of genotypes evaluated in the experiment was too small for a proper QTL mapping study of the traits we evaluated.

More specifically, we selected genotypes for this study from larger populations that were used for QTL mapping of seed composition traits. These selections were made because we did not have enough resources to properly assess yield on all genotypes from both mapping populations but did have enough to assess yield on those genotypes which we suspected could have good yield and promising seed composition (protein and oil) based on observations that were made when the mapping populations were grown in less resource-intensive progeny rows.

While ideally, we would be able to perform a QTL mapping study on yield for the two full mapping populations that we selected lines from, this was unfortunately not an option given the resources we had available.

Nonetheless, we believe that the genotypes we have identified in this study can still provide a valuable resource immediately for both growers and breeders even without information regarding the specific genetic causes underlying their beneficial qualities.

Outcomming plant material might be valuable for breeders, but should be better described and evaluated

 We have added relevant agronomic data (flower color, pubescence, and maturity group) information to the descriptions of the important lines we identified in each of the tables in the manuscript. (Tables 1 and 2, approximately lines 259 and 289, respectively)

I made some remarks to the manuscript. 

The following changes were made to the manuscript and associated data following the comments in the manuscript document.

• Changes to abbreviations and spelling
  • RIL changed to RILs (Line 16)
  • MAB changed to MAS (Lines 29, 30, 35)
• Changed language to make the description of the criteria for effective use of MAS in the introduction more clear. (Lines 31-32)
• Added diagrams to show the pedigree of the populations used in the study as supplementary files. The numbering of supplementary figures was changed accordingly.
  • Supplementary figures were mentioned on lines 106-107, the numbering of supplementary figures was changed on lines 107 and 201
• Descriptions of non-relevant phenotypes (100 seed weight) was removed from the methods section. (Line 119)

We greatly appreciate the suggestions of the reviewer and hope that these changes have addressed the comments made.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article entitled, "Identification of high-yielding soybean lines with exceptional seed composition qualities" is an interesting one. However, it needs some minor revisions as follows:

1. In the introduction, the authors must mention the need for the research. This is missing in the introductory part. Add this in the last paragraph.

2. L 39: These values are not so absolute as they slightly varied from cultivar to cultivar coupled with management practices. Mention in range.

3. In the methodology, the authors must describe all the parameters mentioned in the results section. I have found many parameters are not properly described in the methodology section.

4. Rewrite the 'Genotypes with comparable seed yield and seed oil and superior seed protein content' section. This part is not well described as per the data recorded and needs more in-depth discussion.  

5. In the conclusion, only mention the most significant findings and the recommendations. There is no need to make the conclusion part lengthy. 

Good luck!

Author Response

Thank you for your comments and suggestions for this manuscript. We have taken efforts to make corrections regarding each of your suggestions as follows:

1. In the introduction, the authors must mention the need for the research. This is missing in the introductory part. Add this in the last paragraph.

 We have added a separate paragraph to the end of the introduction section to focus on the importance of the research and how the most important groups that will be affected by the research. (Lines 76-79)

2. L 39: These values are not so absolute as they slightly varied from cultivar to cultivar coupled with management practices. Mention in range.

We have added ranges to the values and replaced approximate values with explicit means from collections of measurements for the relevant phenotypes from a large germplasm collection. (Lines 48-51)

3. In the methodology, the authors must describe all the parameters mentioned in the results section. I have found many parameters are not properly described in the methodology section.

 We have added to the methodology section to make it more clear how the parameters mentioned in the methods section relate to the results presented in the results section. (Lines 179-183)

4. Rewrite the 'Genotypes with comparable seed yield and seed oil and superior seed protein content' section. This part is not well described as per the data recorded and needs more in-depth discussion.

This section has been rewritten to make it more clear why the genotypes indicated in the table of this section (Table 2) are important and relevant to the goals of the manuscript. (Lines 291 – 310)

5. In the conclusion, only mention the most significant findings and the recommendations. There is no need to make the conclusion part lengthy. 

This section has been shortened to briefly mention the most important findings.

We greatly appreciate the suggestions of the reviewer and hope that these changes have addressed the comments made.