PONE-D-21-21085

Ameliorating the Cr toxicity for rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) growth and biomass through the foliar application of micronutrients chelation with amino acids grown in tannery wastewater

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Saleem,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

ACADEMIC EDITOR:

1. It’s very strange for me, why authors have irrigated the soil with tannery wastewater and why they did not collect wastewater irrigated soil. If wastewater is harmful then soil should be taken where this harmful effluent discharged.
2. Please re-write the line number 35-36.
3. Please check the line number 45, is this correct sentence.
4. Authors need to add some key findings in your abstract section.
5. Please use PTEs instead of heavy metals throughout the manuscript.
6. L54-56. How these agricultural practices can contribute metals toxicity in arable lands?.
7. L65- Revise production of industrial section???
8. Please remove spaces b/w words in throughout the manuscript.
9. Authors did experiment about wastewater but I could not found any significant and relevant information in the introduction section.
10. Article is not properly formatted according to the journal format. E.g., headings font size??
11. L133- Total organic content of the….. what does it mean??
12. How temperature was maintained 25 °C and 10 °C average temperature of day and night.???????
13. L152-156. Please re-write these sentences.
14. Please check the texts in all figures (especially on y-axis)
15. Check the superscript and subscript throughout the manuscript.
16. Its very strange for me that Cr permissible limit is 0.10 and wastewater has just 4
17. If wastewater has Cr conc… around 4 then how it reaches to 160 in figure 5 E.

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 26 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Saqib Bashir

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal requirements:

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2. Thank you for stating the following in the Funding Section of your manuscript:

“The publication of the present work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant no. 2017YFC0504704) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51669034, 41761068, 51809224)”

We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Funding section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form.

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“YES”

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf."

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

i have read this manuscript very carefully and evaluted from the neutral reviewers. All they have suggested the major revision. Authors needs to revise this current version very carefully .

1- It’s very strange for me, why authors have irrigated the soil with tannery wastewater and why they did not collect wastewater irrigated soil. If wastewater is harmful then soil should be taken where this harmful effluent discharged.

2- Please re-write the line number 35-36.

3- Please check the line number 45, is this correct sentence.

4- Authors need to add some key findings in your abstract section.

5- Please use PTEs instead of heavy metals throughout the manuscript.

6- L54-56. How these agricultural practices can contribute metals toxicity in arable lands?.

7- L65- Revise production of industrial section???

8- Please remove spaces b/w words in throughout the manuscript.

9- Authors did experiment about wastewater but I could not found any significant and relevant information in the introduction section.

10- Article is not properly formatted according to the journal format. E.g., headings font size??

11- L133- Total organic content of the….. what does it mean??

12- How temperature was maintained 25 °C and 10 °C average temperature of day and night.???????

13- L152-156. Please re-write these sentences.

14- Please check the texts in all figures (especially on y-axis)

15- Check the superscript and subscript throughout the manuscript.

16- Its very strange for me that Cr permissible limit is 0.10 and wastewater has just 4

17- If wastewater has Cr conc… around 4 then how it reaches to 160 in figure 5 E.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Write up is very poor (view comment in attachment). Treatment plan is ambiguous. Figures are not self-explanatory, A, B & C etc. are not explained in description.

Results are not properly presented. Interpretation is not clear. Discussion section must be re-written before re-submission.

Conclusion section must be linked with the quantified results. General statements commonly mislead the readers.

Over all, manuscript is not properly managed. English language is very poor. There are lot of language and grammar mistakes.

Reviewer #2: Respected Editor,

Thanks for choosing me a potential reviewer for the manuscript entitled “Ameliorating the Cr toxicity for rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) growth and biomass through the foliar application of micronutrients chelation with amino acids grown in tannery wastewater” from Zaheer et al. I have read the manuscript carefully and found much novelty in it. In addition, in this research work Authors try to overcome Cr toxicity from wastewater using the application of Zn and Fe-lys and measured various growth, chlorophyll, photosynthesis, oxidative stress and response of antioxidants, nutrients and Cr uptake from different parts of the plants were measured. Although, it’s a novel approach to use Zn or Fe-lys and a cheap method for the developing countries such as Pakistan. Hence, I want to add some suggestions which can increase the readership for the paper. Few suggestions and recommendations are as follow:

On the title: Please correct the scientific name of the plant.

On the abstract: Please add some introductive sentences in the beginning of the abstract and also add some future recommendation in the last of the abstract section. In addition, write your parameters such as oxidative stress or antioxidants, at least once in this part.

On the keywords: These words should not repeat in the title.

On the Introduction: Please cite some latest articles and also try to cite multiple references in each sentence. Also revise some of the minor mistakes such as rapeseed, chromium or ROS. In addition, write your objectives critically.

On the Materials and methods: Please write your protocols in details, also add chemical names and complete description of your analysis.

On the Results and discussions: Please write some details in the legends of the figures and revise some of the results in more descriptive manners. Also revise some sentences about antioxidant capacity in the discussion section.

On the conclusion: Please write at least one future recommendations from your study.

Thanks, and regards

**********

6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-21085_reviewer.pdf

PONE-D-21-21085R1Combined Application of Zinc and Iron-Lysine on Morpho-Physiological Traits, Antioxidant Capacity and Chromium Uptake in Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) Under Different Levels of Tannery WastewaterPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Saleem,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

ACADEMIC EDITOR:please improve grammatical mistakes in the revised version. 

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 15 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Saqib Bashir

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Title is not appropriate and very confusing. Kindly revise title accordingly. Write up is still poor. It requires extensive language improvement. I observe a lot of grammar mistakes in the manuscript.

Reviewer #2: Authors have made all significant changes in the MS, therefore paper should be accepted in the current form.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PONE-D-21-21085R2Combined Application of Zinc and Iron-Lysine and its effects on Morpho-Physiological Traits, Antioxidant Capacity and Chromium Uptake in Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.)PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Saleem,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

ACADEMIC EDITOR:

Please address minor corrections and submit.

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 29 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Saqib Bashir

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Combined Application of Zinc and Iron-Lysine and its effects on Morpho-Physiological Traits, Antioxidant Capacity and Chromium Uptake in Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.)

PONE-D-21-21085R3

Dear Dr. Saleem,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Saqib Bashir

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: