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Peer review report 2 On “Usefulness of thermography for plant water stress detection in citrus and persimmon trees”
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 201S (2015) 65
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/agrformet
Peer Review Report
Peer review report 2 On “Usefulness of thermography for plant water stress detection in citrus and persimmon trees”
Original Submission Recommendation Minor Revision Comments to Author Ballester and coworkers present an assessment of the suitability of canopy temperature (Tc), measured with an infrared thermographic camera, to be used as water stress indicator for irrigation scheduling in Persimmon and Citrus trees. Although the topic is not new, the novelty of the paper relies on the fact that the authors compared the method on two different woody perennial crop species, of which Persimmon tree represents a rather unknown species from the point of view of soil-plant water relations and irrigation management. The paper is generally well written, well structured and covers an adequate literature review on the topic. My main concern has to do with the methodology used to derive the signal intensity for the different water stress indicators.
DOI of published article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2012.08.005. 0168-1923/$ – see front matter http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2015.07.108
As far as I understand, it is not right to compare signal intensities determined from the ratio of two values of a specific indicator (i.e. Psi s and gs) with intensities determined from the difference between two values of an indicator (i.e Tc). While in the first case, signal intensity is unitless, in the second case signal intensity has temperature units (◦ C), which makes difficult to draw conclusions on the most or least sensitive water stress indicators. Therefore, as it is not straightforward to demonstrate that Tc surpasses the sensitivity of the other water stress indicators such as Psi s, and Tc cannot be easily automated (requires an operator obtaining images in the field that will need to be processed afterwards) nor is suitable to be used with species that are sensitive to VPD (i.e. Citrus trees), my question is: what are the actual advantages of using this methodology as a decision making tool for irrigation scheduling compared with other irrigation protocols based on well-documented indicators that also need to be measured in the field (i.e Psi s)? This should be clarified in the discussion section. Anonymous Available online 6 August 2015
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/agrformet
Peer Review Report
Peer review report 2 On “Usefulness of thermography for plant water stress detection in citrus and persimmon trees”
Original Submission Recommendation Minor Revision Comments to Author Ballester and coworkers present an assessment of the suitability of canopy temperature (Tc), measured with an infrared thermographic camera, to be used as water stress indicator for irrigation scheduling in Persimmon and Citrus trees. Although the topic is not new, the novelty of the paper relies on the fact that the authors compared the method on two different woody perennial crop species, of which Persimmon tree represents a rather unknown species from the point of view of soil-plant water relations and irrigation management. The paper is generally well written, well structured and covers an adequate literature review on the topic. My main concern has to do with the methodology used to derive the signal intensity for the different water stress indicators.
DOI of published article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2012.08.005. 0168-1923/$ – see front matter http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2015.07.108
As far as I understand, it is not right to compare signal intensities determined from the ratio of two values of a specific indicator (i.e. Psi s and gs) with intensities determined from the difference between two values of an indicator (i.e Tc). While in the first case, signal intensity is unitless, in the second case signal intensity has temperature units (◦ C), which makes difficult to draw conclusions on the most or least sensitive water stress indicators. Therefore, as it is not straightforward to demonstrate that Tc surpasses the sensitivity of the other water stress indicators such as Psi s, and Tc cannot be easily automated (requires an operator obtaining images in the field that will need to be processed afterwards) nor is suitable to be used with species that are sensitive to VPD (i.e. Citrus trees), my question is: what are the actual advantages of using this methodology as a decision making tool for irrigation scheduling compared with other irrigation protocols based on well-documented indicators that also need to be measured in the field (i.e Psi s)? This should be clarified in the discussion section. Anonymous Available online 6 August 2015