Dominant Fungal Communities Aggregate in the Shallow Rhizosphere Soil of Anabasis aphylla

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript entitled “Dominant fungal communities aggregate in the shallow rhizosphere soil of Anabasis aphylla” is an interesting topic and has the potential to print in a valuable international journal. It was my pleasure to read this article. It is well structured and provides new insight into policy makers' related research fields. There are some points if applying them, the manuscript has a good potential for global distribution.

1. The research problem is not clearly described and needs improvement in the introduction section. What are the challenges in this field? What do the results of this study help to solve these challenges? It can be focused.

2. Discussion section needs improvement:

3. The conclusion section needs to be improved, also, more clearly and more linked you the main insights from the research. I consider it necessary that the conclusions section establishes more clearly the contributions of this work, which are not few. This will help to enhance the relevance of the work at the global level. 

4. Please add clearly research hypotheses to the article.

5. Add an updated reference to a global standard, because MDPI is open access and can be suitable for readers across the world.

6. Fig. 5 is not clear, I suggest separating a and b, so that clarity will come for the betterment of the manuscript.

 

I suggest for major revision.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The subject of the manuscript is related to the subject of the journal 'Sustainability' and the manuscript may potentially be published. At the same time, some sections of the text should be improved and supplemented with factual data. Below I will give some specific questions and comments on the text.

LL11-21: Please add a little more concrete results of the study to the abstract, as well as indicate the scientific significance and value of this study for science.

L22: Use keywords that do not repeat the title. In addition, geographical names are better given as the last keywords, and not the first.

LL24, 57, 121, 199, and 270: Please use the numbering of the manuscript chapters according to the template (1 - Introduction; 2 - Materials and methods; ...; 5 - Conclusion).

LL25-56: Unfortunately, the Introduction does not give an understanding of the modern system of knowledge in the described field of science. What previously obtained key data and hypotheses are contradictory? What aspects of our knowledge are still missing? What needs to be clarified for a better understanding of the issue?

L50: better use "water content"

Figs 2, 3, 5: Please make the legend for the drawings a little larger. Now it's very hard to read

L155: 'are' --> 'were'. 

L178: I believe that first it is necessary to describe and show changes in the physicochemical properties of the soil (at least describe whether there were significant differences in some parameters between different soil layers and between the bulk and rhizosphere soil), and only then discuss the influence of these factors on the fungal community

LL271 - 282: Please describe in more detail the scientific significance of your research.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript can be accepted for publication

Reviewer 2 Report

The text was significantly revised and the majority of comments was taken into account. I belive that the manuscript may be published in present form