Maize (Zea mays) Response to Anthill Soil (Termitaria), Manure and NPK Fertilization Rate under Conventional and Reduced Tillage Cropping Systems
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Paper 659104:
Maize (Zea mays) Response to Anthill Soil (Termitaria), Manure and NPK Fertilization Rate under Conventional and Reduced Tillage Cropping Systems
The paper presented for evaluation is interesting and can be published in a selected journal after significant improvement.
In general, I suggest the authors of the publication to shorten it by creating a supplement and transferring some information to it. In my opinion, the presented version is more like a research report than a scientific publication. In the sections below I have put my observations to the authors for consideration. Please rewrite and shorten the work so that it is more friendly to the reader.
1. In the summary of the research goal, add: and to the yield of three maize varieties.Write what animals the manure used in the experiment came from
2. Write what forms and trade names of mineral fertilizers you used. Give the chemical symbols and concentration of the ingredient in the fertilizer.
3. In the publication you write that you have studied three varieties of corn. Please write it in the methodology and provide the names of the varieties. I suggest that Figure 1 be transferred to the supplement
4. Please rebuild sentence 163-164 and do not start with pH
5. Correct table title 1. Remove manure
6. Please treat the results and discussion chapter together. In this version, in the description of results there is practically only a meteorological factor. I suggest combining A and C as well as B and D in one graph. In this way, the differences between the years of research will be more visible.
7. I suggest you move the maps (Figure 2) to the supplement. The public concerns the influence of other factors on maize yield than meteorological conditions. In this case, the research years are just a replication in an experiment.
8. The pH scale is logarithmic. Therefore, arithmetic means of results should not be given. It is better not to include in table 5 and 6 post-hoc analysis. Please leave only the results and their ranges.
9. In your conclusions, please also refer to the results obtained from other experience factors, i.e. soil tillage and type of maize variety.
10. Apply the record of units in the SI system.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript researech interesting sustainability topic. Its presentation is not good.:
The key problem is the poor English which makes the text hardly readable and understandable. Did I understood properly that you did not use "classical" control without any fertilizer? I recommend using a different abbreviation for conservation agriculture as it can be easilly mischanged to conventional. You can use e.g. "cons" vers. "conv". Figure 2: What are "Rain days"? Do you mean number of days in which it was raining? Figure 3: Can you indicate, what intervals are depicted? Figure 4: What is the green lines with points? I have never seen such type of graph. Please expllain. Section 4 (Soil pH...) shall be numbered on lower level (e.g. 4.2.). You can structure the Results and Disucsussion section, it would help understanding your ideas flow. You are using ANOVA which is a parametrical statistical test requiring normally distributed data. Did you tested the normality of the data? Use names in the references also, I is hard to read e.g. that "[2] epmhasized..." better would be "Authors emphasized ... [2]" or "Institution emphasized... [2]" The numbering of pages is strange and starts several times from 1. Line 318 - Use indexes and capital O in H2O.Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Evaluated ms has an intersting subject, however the current version is very chaotic and demands to be significantly improved.
Reefrence section in the current form is comletely unacceptable, also methodology demands to be written with more details.
Also irritating is the fact of incompetent citation of literature items in the text, I tried to apply appropriate corrections, which are presented below:
Line 31: it should be: Soils are the basis....management practices [1].
Line 36: it should be: degraded, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) emphasized on...health [2].
Line 37: remove the double space between on and restoring
Line 40: play
Line 43: I suggest here to add the following citation: Wolińska A., Kuźniar A., Zielenkiewicz U., Banach A., Izak D., Stępniewska Z., Błaszczyk M. 2017. Metagenomic analysis of some potential nitrogen-fixing bacteria in arable soils at different formation process. Microbial Ecology, 73: 162-176.
Line 48: it should be: Thierfelder et al. [3]
Line 65: remove double space
Line 74: nutrients [8-12]. For instance, it was reported...soils [8]. - also remove double space...
Line 76: remove "in his research"
Line 80: remove double space
Line 80: it should be: Additionally, Mukherjee and Lal [12]...
Line 89: remove double space
Line 109: remove double space
Line 126: remove double space
Line 147: The experimental lay...
Line 156: more details are needed for description control samples - how many soils were taken, did you sampled single samples (how many?) and then mixed them into one sample?
How the soil samples were stored before analysis? they were sieved? I did not found such important information in the paper.
Line 162: In how many replicates these measurements were realized?
You wrote about AAS analysis but nothing is known about samples preparation to this measurements, I suppose the samples were mineralized before - and this step should be also described here
Line 172: conductivity meter [18].
Line 176: how many sub-samples were collected in order to receive representative sample?
Line 196: remove double space
Line 197: remove double space
Line 200 and 202: Table 1 and Table 2 could be simplified, please merge those cells that have the same units, i.e. cmol/kg (and present one unit for three metals) and the same for mg/kg
Line 206: the numbering of Figures as 2A, 2B and 2C is misleading, I suggest to rewrite is as Figure 2 Figure 3, Figure 4...etc
Line 207: remove double space
Line 236: what does it means values after ±? is standard error or standard deviation values?
Line 249: the same question as above
Line 268: Misleading Figures numeration: instead of Fig. 3A should be Figure 4 etc.
Moreover, there is lack of comments for presented Figures (3A, 3B and 4).
Line 287: as above...only one sentence as comments for Table 5 and Table 6 is decidedly too little in scientific publication. More explanation is demanded.
Line 293: what does it means values after ±?
Line 310: what does it means values after ±?
Line 327: also been earlier reported with use...production [21,22].
Line 347: remove double space
Line 358: it was confirmed that....nutrients [27].
Line 373: remove double space
Line 376: [30-34]
Line 380: Other authors [35-38] observed that...
Line 391: [39-42]
Line 427: I suggest to summarize the conclusions and present them into more concise form
References are not prepared according Sustainability demands, please read carefully the author's guidelines and rewrite reference positions, please also pay an particular attention on proper punctuation. Also abbreviations of journal names should be applied instead of full names, you forgot about doi numbers and the fact that the publication year should be bolded.
In the current form References style is not acceptable.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors did a good job revising the manuscript, nevertheless a ore work needs to be done:
The authors added names in referencing where appropriate (good) but on many places there are missing numbers in brackets (just [] or [ ,41-43] etc.). The numbers are obligatory, authors' names are just for better reading. This might be caused by a error in the automatic system (looks like systematic error) Line 121 - what do you mean by @ in the description of nutrients? The same character was also in the discussion. Numbiring of pages can be achieved properly even if you make parts of the text "kandscape". Just set the numbering to "continue from previous". Table 1: If the values are from triplicates, they should be presented with std. deviation. Figure 1 lacks any description of the axes.` Figure 2 and 3> I recommend to make the charts larger. You used the landscape orientation of the page, but a plenty of space is not used.Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Authors rewritten ms according my suggestions and replied on all of my comments. Their explanation are acceptable.
I only found some mistakes (connected with punctuation and reference numbering) that should be corrected:
Line 34, 140: delete one full stop
Line 49, 291, 302, 377, 386, 396, 406, 410: lack of citation number
Line 137: it should be 0-20 cm
Line 147: The soil pH
Line 262: [42,43]
Line 266: [44,45]
Line 447: should be 4
After this correction I reccommend to accept this paper.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
