Content of review 1, reviewed on October 19, 2020

There are some highlighted issues need to be addressed properly by the authors to improve the manuscript:

General
1) Significance of these fungi associated with the rubber leaf blight disease, either, they are the main causal agent(s) or secondary disease pathogen(s) is lacking and not convincing enough. The role of these fungi are not comprehensively discussed. Are they consortium to cause the blight disease on rubber leaves?
2) Molecular identification could help to identify these fungi, however, the pathogenicity study (fulfill Koch's Postulates) need to be included to confirm these fungi are real causal agent.

Summary/abstract
- is not condensed with the important points, should has points of Introduction (problem statement and objective), materials and methods, results and conclusion.

Introduction
- Problem statement should be described clearly
- The first report on the blight disease in Malaysia should be cited properly
- Reference of Nyaka Ngobisa et al. 2013 is missing from the reference list. The reference could to give idea to reviewer, the study by Nyaka Ngobisa et al.2013 was a blight disease of rubber in Malaysia and not other places.
- The objective of study is not convincing enough. The authors should emphasize on why the identification of these fungi is very important task, are they main causal pathogen?, how the authors confirm these fungi either they are the primary or secondary causal agents or saprophytes?
- What the main purpose of this study? and how the finding can be benefited

Materials and Methods
- How many samples and how the collection has been done should be clearly described in this section
- Pathogenicity study should be conducted to confirm the isolated fungi are the pathogen of blight disease

Results and Discussion
- The reason two different clones are selected in this study is not clearly stated and discussed in this manuscript. Are these clones susceptible to the disease?
- The importance of these six fungi is not clearly discussed. Comparison with other studies such as from Indonesia and Thailand also showed that the isolated fungi are not the causal agent of blight but other diseases.
- Conclusion is not convincing enough to conclude the isolates are pathogens to rubber leaves. The study needs to conduct pathogenicity study.

References
- There are missing references

Source

    © 2020 the Reviewer.

Content of review 2, reviewed on February 01, 2021

Please refer to my comments and suggestions as attached.

Source

    © 2021 the Reviewer.

References

    Sagaff, S. A. S., Ali, N. S. 2021. Fungi associated with the blighted leaf symptoms of Hevea brasiliensis in Malaysia. Forest Pathology.