Meta-Analysis Assessing Potential of Drone Remote Sensing in Estimating Plant Traits Related to Nitrogen Use Efficiency

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper needs minor revision.  The authors should carefully check the use of acronyms throughout the text.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This review manuscript focused on the quantitative drone-based sensing of nitrogen use efficiency for field crop production. The paper is well organized and standard methods were used in this review article. My primary concern is that the author has reviewed only 35 peer-reviewed articles. Given the limited volume of literature, it becomes quite challenging to make a significant contribution to the community. I acknowledge that strict quality control was applied in the broad search, which resulted in the small pool of literature included in this review. However, I recommend adjusting the quality control criteria to allow a broader range of literature, which would significantly expand the total number of references reviewed in detail. Therefore, I suggest a major revision that requiring re-review, if the author intends to continue pursuing the possibility of publishing this manuscript in the journal.

English writing of this manuscript is fine. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Based on previous studies and results, this review summarizes the potential of using UAVs to calculate nitrogen use efficiency, as well as the analysis of factors for impact assessment. It was also highlighted that drones have had a significant impact on modern agriculture and are an important tool for gaining insight into plant health, growth and nitrogen fertilizer use. However, there are a number of problems and flaws in this manuscript that lead me to propose a substantial revision.

1. The tables in this manuscript should be made more appropriate and easy to understand.

2. The abbreviation for "multi-spectrometer" quoted in the manuscript graphics should be consistent with the text abbreviation.

3. In addition to R2 quantification, other indexes should be used to quantify the accuracy of plant trait analysis as the specified effect size measure.

4. Research on texture features mentioned in line 664, but lack of references, e.g., Zhou et al., Frontiers in Plant Science, 2022.

5. This review summarizes the results of previous studies, but the author's description of the insights and analysis of the study is too concise.

6. The description of the model formula should be more specific.

Moderate editing of English language may be needed

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The reviewer would like to express appreciation for the significant expansion in the total number of peer-reviewed articles reviewed in this study. The author has seamlessly integrated new studies into the existing structural framework. Therefore, I recommend accepting this version for publication.