Evaluation of Adaptation and Yield Stability of Cocoa Progenies in Marginal Conditions: Results from an on Farm Cocoa Trial Set up in a Forest–Savannah Transition Area in Cameroon

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

- English must be checked and deeply revised especially in the introduction.
- In my opinion the calculation for the annual potential yield trait does not seem solid enough
- Varieties are commented in results section without any previous information on the differences among plots: I strongly recommend to move this part after the beginning of the discussion where these topics are clarified. Otherwise it is difficult to understand the effectiveness of the method you used. By the way, except for variety IMC67xSNK109, the trend is not so clear as you indicated
- In discussion (lines 286-87) authors commented the significance of effects by comparing them: I believe that this is not proper without a random model

Author Response

English must be checked and deeply revised especially in the introduction.The authors modified some sentences, in order to improve the English, in the introduction, and in the other parts of the article

.- In my opinion the calculation for the annual potential yield trait does not seem solid enoughThe authors justify in the text the reason why they count unripe pods on the trees, instead of working with harvested pods. This methodology for yield estimation is adapted from the ones adopted  by some other authors, and is convenient for on farm assessment, because these countings can be made independently from the harvests made by the farmers.

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  - Varieties are commented in results section without any previousinformation on the differences among plots: I strongly recommend tomove this part after the beginning of the discussion where these topics are clarified. Otherwise it is difficult to understand the
  effectiveness of the method you used. By the way, except for variety IMC67xSNK109, the trend is not so clear as you indicated. The authors moved the comments on the varieties in the discussion, as suggested. The authors recomend the release of IMC 67 x SNK 64 and SNK 109 x T 79/501, in order to avoid releasing one single progeny, despite the lower yield level observed for these two progenies. However, these two progenies still show a yield level  significantly higher than the ones observed for the remaining progenies.

- In discussion (lines 286-87) authors commented the significance of effects by comparing them: I believe that this is not proper without a random model

The authors agree with the reviewer that a comparison between fixed and random effects is not proper, and removed this comparison

Reviewer 2 Report

The article explains about the evaluation of adaptation and yield stability of nine cocao progenies. I have a few comments that could help to improve the manuscript.

1) Please discuss what type of experimental design was used. How many replications, what design?

2) How the data was analysed? Did you take average across all reps? Did you estimate BLUP values for each progeny?

3) Please mention what Pvalue, the significance was observed in ANOVA of results section. 

4) Line 251 of page 7, replace indentificadors with identifiers.

5) "The release of this progeny would result in a disappointing level of yield for many of the farmers who would plant it." I feel like this sentence is very strongly negative. Is there any better way to rephrase the sentence to convey the same message?

Author Response

• Please discuss what type of experimental design was used. How many replications, what design?

The authors added explanations about the experimental design in the « material and method » section.

• How the data was analysed? Did you take average across all reps? Did you estimate BLUP values for each progeny?

The authors added explanations in the « material and method » section, where they explain that they calculate means across all reps. They did not use BLUP values for each progeny; the means were estimated by LSMEANS with SAS (adjusted to the unbalanced experimental design).

• Please mention what Pvalue, the significance was observed in ANOVA of results section. 

The authors added the information that the P value was 0.01

• Line 251 of page 7, replace indentificadors with identifiers.

The replacement was done by the authors.

• "The release of this progeny would result in a disappointing levelof yield for many of the farmers who would plant it." I feel like this sentence is very strongly negative. Is there any better way to rephrase the sentence to convey the same message?

The authors have modified this sentence

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

English should be revised