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Authors have fully addressed the concerns of 3 reviewers. The quality of the revised manuscript is improved significantly. Right now, it is acceptable.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Julin Maloof, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
Please fully respond to the comments of the reviewers
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This manuscript described the effect of melatonin in response to drought stress in maize seedlings. Two different methods including foliar and soil drench ways were used to precisely monitor the effects of varying concentration of melatonin against drought. Many morphological and biochemical parameters were thoroughly investigated to confirm the positive roles of melatonin. The experiments were well organized and provided solid evidences concerning the melatonin’s physiological roles when the maize seedlings were challenged with drought stress. Authors are missing a couple of recent articles and several typos to be corrected as follows.
1. line 27: change Foliar Application into Foliar application.
2. line 37: lowers to lower
3. line 66: Authors would be better to add the most recent review article (Reiter RJ, Tan DX, Sharma R. 2018. Historical perspective and evaluation of the mechanisms by which melatonin mediates seasonal reproduction in mammals. Melatonin Research 1:59-77. DOI: 10.32794/mr11250004)
4. line 72-73: Authors did not cited the most recent achievement of melatonin’s novel role against ER stress in plants (Lee HY. Back K. 2019. Melatonin plays a pivotal role in conferring tolerance against endoplasmic reticulum stress via mitogen-activated protein kinase and bZIP60 in Arabidopsis. Melatonin Research 1:94-108. DOI: 10.32794/mr11250006)
5. line 79: Add a recent interesting article (Arnao MB, Hernandez-Ruiz J. 2019. Melatonin: a new plant hormone and/or a plant master regulator? Trends in Plant Science 24:38-48. DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2018.10010)
6. line 84: A few studies instead of A few study
7. line 88: In addition
8. line 89: melatonin’s into melatonin
9. line 90: Authors need to be add the most recent review concerning the antioxidant activity of melatonin (Reina M, Castaneda-Arriaga R, Perez-Gonzalez A, Guzman-Lopez EG, Tan DX, Reiter RJ, Galano A. 2018. A computer-assisted systemic search for melatonin derivatives with high potential as antioxidants. Melatonin Research 1:27-58. DOI: 10.32794/mr1125003)
10. line 134: whereas
11. line 145: 10 ml into 10 mL. Check out throughout the manuscript.
12. line 157: 1 mmol into 1 mM
13. line 163: Add space between number and unit. 13mM into 13 mM; 750mM; 4um into 4 uM; 0.1mM.
14. line 167: 50mM into 50 mM
15. line 172: 0.5 mMAsA into 0.5 mM AsA
16. line 175: 12.5mM into 12.5 mM
17. line 180: 15,000 g into 15,000 x g
18. line 183: 10,000 rpm into 10,000 x g
19. lines 190, 194: ul into uL
20. line 199: process into processed
21. line 221: water stress into drought stress
22. line 224: fresh into Fresh
23. line 233: In into in
24. lines 253, 255: delete “there was”
25. line 261: DM2. Which into DM2 which
26. line 301: Remove a phrase “With increasing…enzymes.
27. lines 319, 328: evidentially into evidently
28. line 377: endogenous promoters into endogenous growth factors
29. line 396: maintained into maintain
30. line 403: improve into improved
31. line 430, 431, 433: Remove parentheses
32. line 487: Proline into proline
33. lines 500, 509, 528, 554, 567, 653: Italic forms of species.
34. line 522, 531, 536, 541, 544 560, 589, 610: Change capital letters into lower case.
35. line 545: Remove 1 after Rice
36. Fig 7 legend: Ascorbate into ascorbate
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It is well-written and easy to follow. Data are properly presented and interpreted. But there is no special innovation in this paper.
The author presented a study on the impact of varied concentrations of melatonin on the physiological and morphology responses of maize seedling to drought stress. Many researches on drought stress mitigation by exogenous application of melatonin have been reported. Here, the authors targeted their study by exogenous application of melatonin in leaves and roots of maize, showing that its alleviated drought stress effect by depressing ROS burst, increasing soluble protein and proline content, activating antioxidant enzymes activity, which is an interesting topic. The results are clearly presented. But this article needs major revision, especially the abstract and discussion. After the required revisions, I will recommend publishing.
the authors targeted their study by exogenous application of melatonin in leaves and roots of maize, showing that its alleviated drought stress effect by depressing ROS burst, increasing soluble protein and proline content, activating antioxidant enzymes activity, which is an interesting topic.
The results are clearly presented. But this article needs major revision, especially the abstract and discussion.
1) this manuscript showed soil drench and seed drench, but in my opinion, soil drench or seed drench (L 213) is different, which one did the authors use. 2) Please carefully follow the format required by PeerJ. Such as in line 239, after DCK2 add a comma. 3) Please show the pictures of root length phenotype, it will make your results more convincing. 4) The writing should be improved and the format should be recheched.
Abstract: in this experiment, foliar and soil applications of melatonin were performed, but in this section, the author only showed the results of foliar application of melatonin. Why?
L18-19 Please rephrase this sentence, it may make reader confusing.
L19 “check” should be replaced by “investigate”
Introduction:
L33 Please rephrases “Drought is an important to stress” this sentence, it may make readers confusing.
L36 delete “pigments”
L38-39 Please rephrases “One of the common consequences of” this sentence
L44 Please rephrases “an increase in the ROS levels could be toxic” this sentence
L66-69 After this sentence, please added references
Material and methods:
Please add the formulas for calculating the antioxidant enzyme activity, the contents of soluble protein and proline, and the concentration of MDA and H2O2.
Results:
In this section, the results were clearly presented, however, there are some errors needed to be revised.
L205-206 Please added references.
L210 delete “in the”
L233 change “In” to “in”
L258-259 Please rephrase this sentence, it may be make readers confusion.
L267 delete “pigments”
L268 Please rephrase “In melatonin foliar application”
L271-273 please rephrase this sentence, it may be make readers confusion.
L273 “Chla” changes to “Chl a”
L274 “Chla” changes to “Chl a”
L276 “Chla” changes to “Chl a”
L283 “(Fig. 1-3)” changes to “(Fig 1-3)”
L290 “expansion” should be replaced by another word.
L332 “MD1, MD2, MD3, and MD4” changes to “’DM1, DM2, DM3, and DM4”.
Discussion:
L356 Please rephrases this sentence
L359-360 This sentence may be replaced by “During our study, the protective role of melatonin was investigated in maize seedling under drought stress.”
L375-376 Please added “Table 1”
L376-378 Please added references
L388-389 Please rephrases this sentence and added references.
L400 “amount” should be replaced by “content”
L400 delete “content”
L401 “These results indicated that melatonin treatment” should be replaced by “These results indicated that high concentrating of melatonin treatment in leaves”
L426 “transportation” changes to “transpiration”
L435-437 After this sentence, please added “(Fig 4, Fig 5, Fig 6, Fig 7)”
Conclusion:
L481-482 Please rephrase this sentence, it may be make readers confusion.
L487 “Proline” changes to “proline”
Table 1:
The unit of root length is not correct, please revision.
Supplemental:
The unit should be indicated after each measurement indicators and the font need to be Times New Roman.
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