Predicting Sugarcane Harvest Date and Productivity with a Drone-Borne Tri-Band SAR
, Marlon S. Alcântara 1, Juliana A. Góes 1, Bárbara Teruel 2, Luciano P. Oliveira 3,*, Jhonnatan Yepes 2, Valquíria Castro 1, Leonardo S. Bins 4, Felicio Castro 1, Dieter Luebeck 5, Laila F. Moreira 5, Rodrigo Cintra 6, Lucas H. Gabrielli 1 and Hugo E. Hernandez-Figueroa 1Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper can be accepted as it was improved much.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
The reviewed manuscript has been updated, considering all reviewers’ comments and suggestions.
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper presents innovative results of research on the use of drone-based SAR to predict the optimum date of harvesting crops, here sugarcane. The research problem, the proposed methodology and the obtained results are novel and very valuable.
The chapters introduction, methodology, results, discussion, conclusions and references are complete.
The manuscript has been prepared with care, although in the methodology and results chapters there are passages that require correction. There are sentences and paragraphs, in these chapters, that could be considered redundant, so it is suggested to think how these chapters could be shortened.
Specific comments:
- Please add reference to that statement: “Agriculture plays an essential role in economic development, so efficient management and monitoring of crops are essential to achieving maximum productivity.”
- Please add reference to that statement: “In particular, sugarcane is an important crop worldwide and, especially, in Brazil, due to its multiple uses such as: sugar, ethanol, biodegradable products, energy generation, and food for animal production.”
- Line 51: “Besides, the RI” – This is the first time this abbreviation has appeared in full text. Give the full name. Similarly SAR – line 63, (SAR - Search And Rescue? :)); Similary AGB. The abstract is not part of the full text.
- Line 150: Unfortunate wording: “This work presents a harvesting date and productivity prediction methodology for sugarcane crops.” There is much more to the work. Suggestion for change.
- Line 157-158 – the sentence is not relevant to the work. I suggest deleting it.
- Line 162-163 – wrong end mark.
- Line 323, 329: – wrong end mark.
- Line 380: „ In this section, the AGB estimation results, the harvesting date, and productivity prediction are presented.” – Redundant sentence. Thought should be given to removing this type of sentence from a work that is quite a long manuscript.
- Line 389: “30m” >>”30 m” Add space mark.
- Line 395: The first sentence is redundant.
- Figure 15 needs to be adapted to the manuscript format.
- Line 636-637: “large farms ….coverage of around 500 ha.” . I suggest that we reflect on whether it is objective to consider a farm to be large when it covers more than 500 hectares. Different definitions of large farms are used in different regions of the world. I would like to ask to reflect on this and to correct the sentence.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
The reviewed manuscript has been updated, considering all reviewers’ comments and suggestions.
I am attaching a PDF file addressing all your comments and suggestions.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
see attached file
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
The reviewed manuscript has been updated, considering all reviewers’ comments and suggestions.
I am attaching a PDF file addressing all your comments and suggestions.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
