Determining Irrigation Depths for Soybean Using a Simulation Model of Water Flow and Plant Growth and Weather Forecasts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors made a lot of effort in the method development and data collection, but the manuscript is not acceptable. There are a few concerns in the manuscript: 1) the experimental design of the field experiment is not appropriate;2) it is not very clear about the advantages of the proposed method over other methods; 3) statistical analyses are missing, and 4) it is difficult to tell innovativeness of the current study.

For the introduction section, authors are suggested to add more detailed comparisons with other irrigation scheduling methods.

Line 31, authors may consider replacing “maximize” by “maximum”.

Line 41-43, the sentence is confusing. The purpose of deficit irrigation is to maintain crop yield.

Line 57, for the word “identical”, do authors mean similar?

For materials and methods, Line 127-128, was the field size of 15 by 16 m for treatment or replicate?

Line 129, why did the irrigation interval set at two days?

Line 143-144, what was the unit for transpiration productivity? Why was the price of water set to the one used in Israel other than Japan?

Figure 3, why did not authors use linear regressions for the calibration? Regression statistics was missing.

Figure 4, did authors developed the Kcb curve?

Line 167-168, the experimental design and replicates are not appropriate. What models and/or programs did authors use for data analysis?

For results and discussion, Figure 5, no statistics was presented.

Line 195, which model could estimate VWC? The model was not introduced in the manuscript.

There are only 6 points in Figure 9 for comparing irrigation depths from different methods. The data points are too few for comparison.

Line 245, 17 and 72 cm were not included in Figure 11.

What are the differences between the proposed method and the three-predicted point method? What are the improvements of the proposed method?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Congratulatios for the work.  

I think it's a very interesting topic  and a good article. It is correctly designed and with good writing.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf