Qualitative Analysis of Nitrogen Flows within Farms in Darusa, Bangladesh

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It is interesting to understand nitrogen flows within farms in a village level. The authors draw a framework of nitrogen flows through a survey of farmers. Results showed that the major of organic residues was used as fuel rather than as soil input. A suggest was made that organic residues should be practiced in order to reduce losses of available nitrogen from the system. However, in the manuscript the nitrogen budget in flows was not conducted clearly. Most importantly, there is a lack of quantification of influence factors on farmers’ practices in field management. Accordingly, it is difficulty to evaluate the potential of soil nitrogen improvement based on farmers’ behavior. Effective information is limited from this manuscript for readers in a large scale.

 

The abstract is not well written. Contained information is not comprehensive and limited.

Studies on nitrogen cycle is numerous, the scientific question is not well demonstrated in the introduction.

The population is 135 in Darusa, and 100 farmers were selected. All the people are farmers without children and old persons?

Fig. 8 is not clearly illustrated.

Fig. 13 is too complex to be understood easily.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. The introduction needs improvement with the most recent reference, also I suggest adding more literature.

2. Line 59, check the text font size. 

3. Statistics information is missing, Must add.

4. Line 139, (.) Results, Why did the author put a (dot .) before the result, Please carefully read the full article, and avoid such mistakes.

5. Line 140, Stratification of the farmers in the study area, I found just one reference to support this result, Please add more related literature.

6. I think Figure 2 and Figure 9 are not needed, I suggest deleting or moving to a supplementary file.

7. Move figures 3, 11, and 12 into a supplementary file

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Improve the text quality for readers. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, I’m really enjoy the topic and objectives of your manuscript. They are not so usual for more traditional papers in field of agroecology, agrotechnology and best available practices in sustainable agricultural land-use, but very useful for better understanding between farmers and researchers. The last one is extremely important for best available practices’ localization and dissemination taking into attention the principal agroecological, economic benefits or risks and possible misunderstanding in their assessment.

I’m very satisfied with the total number of farms that you investigated. But I believe it makes sense to improve some agroecologically-sound elements of the paper, including the following ones:

11)    I believe it makes sense to take more attention on the soil characteristics in this study including soil taxon, soil texture and soil organic carbon as potentially limiting ecological factors for the efficiency of nitrogen use from plant residues and manure;

22)    I believe the interpretation of the results could be essentially improved taking into consideration the potential influence of the interactions between soil features and plant residues or manure application on the investigated nitrogen flows and their consequences on soil fertility, crop production and agricultural land-use profitability;

33)    I believe some additional system analysis data on the crop yield in the investigated farms with different soil cover and land-use practices including plant residues and manure application need to add the additional arguments in the conclusions of the manuscript.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The revised manuscript has been improved. However, the abstract can be improved and some necessary data should be indicated in the results.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Author has improved the revised version of this article, therefore i suggest acceptance.

Author Response

Thank you for your positive comments.