Simulating Maize Productivity under Selected Climate Smart Agriculture Practices Using AquaCrop Model in a Sub-humid Environment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

I have gone through the manuscript, overall, the manuscript is well written containing reasonable amount of data for publication. However, I found many shortcomings which are given below for your corrections:

• In abstract, most of abbreviations are given without their description like Y, WUE, E etc. The abbreviation should be given with detail, while being used in text first time.
• More keywords need to be added. Currently only three key words are given.
• You mentioned that the Aquacrop “can be” used. You should recommend or otherwise the model, based on the results of your study.
• There is transitional gap between paragraphs in “Introduction section”. Please improve it.
• The layout of experiment needs to be added.
• The experimental design is tedious and confusing. The study was repeated only for one season, but the other season was not repeated in next year. In these kind of studies, multi seasonal data is acceptable to avoid biased variation.
• What was the purpose of model development (calibration and validation)? There is no scenario simulation, which should be the part of your research. I recommend generating the experiment data for the period from Oct.2020-Jan.2021. In this way, you will have the scenario simulation part in manuscript as well as the crop data (Oct.2020-Jan.2021). Then the results would be improved using newly generated data.  
• Table 1 and Table 2 are representing results. These should be moved to “Results section”.
• How did you calculate irrigation requirement and how was its application (methos)? Should be incorporated.
• Are “fertilizer applications” based on recommendations or soil fertility status. If yes, please add reference and its description.
• What were the critical parameters for model run? Are the parameters, given in table 3, critical values?
• In Table 4: the above ground biomass is given, what about crop yield. Also, in the table, the validation column is presenting the values only for one season. Are these values presenting the average of two seasons?
• Conclusions need to be re-written according to the objectives of the study.

Author Response

Kindly find our response herewith attached in PDF

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1. Limitations in the study
2. Give necessary citation wherever required
3. Add innovativness & novelty in introduction section
4. Source in images are not given proper in MS
5. Re write & shorten the conclusion
6. Objective is not properly defined in MS.
7. Have you approach any other parameters?
8. Have you validate your work?
9. Add some latest reference relevant to your study & work.
10. Re-write introduction with addition of innovativeness & novelty

Major revision

Author Response

Kindly find herewith attached our response in a point by point

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

I read a very interesting research paper. Congratulations on the hard work! Some comments:

• In general: there are sometimes speech problems.
• Abstract, line 20: It should be "climate smart agriculture (CSA) practices" instead of "climate smart agriculture practices (CSA)"
• Page 2, lines 56-76: Can you please give concrete examples of CSA practices? You description is very broad in its current form.
• Page 4, Figure 1: Please provide detail on what represents the temperature and what represents the precipitations in the legend. If the right y-axis denotes the precipitations, why do you show 0 to 50 mm and talk about hundreds of millimeters in the text?
• Page 7, Equation (2): There is a problem with the equation layout.
• Page 10, Equations (3-7): There is a problem with the equation layout.
• Page 10, Equation (5), line 317: There is a problem with your mathematical notation (subscript).
• Page 10, line 329: There is a problem with your mathematical notations.
• Pages 10 and after: There is a problem with your page numbering. It starts again at 1.
• Discussion: There are two main problems: (1) you do not discuss the consequences of having a poor performance modeling under severe water stress; (2) you do not discuss the implications of CSA when it comes to goals such as the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. May I remind you that you are submitting your article to a journal dedicated to sustainability.

Author Response

Many thanks for feedback, find our respnseherewith attached in PDF

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Most of the comments have been addressed but still following revision need to be incorporated:

• At least one more key word needs to be added.
• As you agreed that scenario simulation is necessary. I again recommend you that scenario simulations should be the part of this manuscript. Otherwise, the model study cannot be justified. Also, it will improve your results as discussed in my previous comments. 
• I agreed with your response to comment 7.
• Regarding response to comment 8: Please add the detail (date, amount etc.) of rainfall events.
• Please double check that all the given references in bibliography are cited in text. I found that some bibliographic references are not present in text i.e. Kaizzi, MAAIF, 2017.

Author Response

Greetings. Our responses to the comments are herewith attached for round 2. and we thank you for the comments and the recommendation. In addition to point 2 of the attached file,  the application of the model was carried out from the calibrations and validations and this has been demonstrated in Table 4 and Table 5 of the current manuscript with the statistics of CSA practices indicated and also, besides calibration and validation of the manuscript assesses the differences among the CSA farm managements practices for the current climate. Furthermore,  this paper based on the calibration and validation of the AquaCrop model and it is applicable and this is also in tandem with previous works related e.g Araya et al. (2010); de Sales et al.(2020); He et al.(2021) and GreavesWang (2016).

References

 Chibarabada, T. P., Modi, A. T., & Mabhaudhi, T. (2020). Calibration and evaluation of aquacrop for groundnut (Arachis hypogaea) under water deficit conditions. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 281, 107850.

Garcia-Vila, M., Morillo-Velarde, R., & Fereres, E. (2019). Modeling sugar beet responses to irrigation with AquaCrop for optimizing water allocation. Water, 11(9), 1918.

 de Sales, R. A., Xavier, A. C., de Oliveira, E. C., de Oliveira, F. L., da Silva, D. M. N., & da Silva Berilli, S. (2020). Calibration and validation of FAO-AquaCrop model to estimate the total biomass and yacon root yield. International Journal of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, 13(3), 123-128.

He, Q., Li, S., Hu, D., Wang, Y., & Cong, X. (2021). Performance assessment of the AquaCrop model for film-mulched maize with full drip irrigation in Northwest China. Irrigation Science, 39(2), 277-292.

Greaves, G. E., & Wang, Y. M. (2016). Assessment of FAO AquaCrop model for simulating maize growth and productivity under deficit irrigation in a tropical environment. Water, 8(12), 557.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The revision is appropriate

Author Response

We thank you for consindering our responses

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the updates.

Author Response

We thank you for consindering our responses

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Your response to comments is satisfactory. 

Author Response

The clean copy has been kindly attached were changes are effected  sugested by the academic editor. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx