Drainage Conditions Influence Corn-Nitrogen Management in the US Upper Midwest

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Τhe authors  present an excellent study and provide important information since studies quantifing the direct effect of drainage condition on optimal N fertilizer rate for corn production are limited. In fact the study gives a holistic approach to the influence of drainage soil conditions on N management in corn crops. The manuscript is very well written and structured. Materials and methods are very informative including a good experimental design and an appropriate statistical analysis. Both presentation of results and discussion provide and discuss with clarity and scientific evidence the findings of the experimental results. Tables and figures are understandable to the reader.

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing our manuscript. We also agree that there is limited research about the differences in corn nitrogen requirement in drained vs. undrained conditions.

We believe that this study provides valuable insights about both agronomic and environmental aspects of corn production under different drainage conditions. 

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments
The article aimed at evaluating the influence of soil drainage condition on corn grain yield, N requirement, and residual soil N, and evaluates the utility of in-season soil N measurements to guide N applications. 

The article lacks  research questions (RQs) to be answered at the end of 
the paper and there is there is no clear hypothesis. This has to be clearly shown in the introduction section of the article. 

The article is quite long and I suggest that you shorten the discussion section especially. In the section, authors need to discuss 
their key finding in context of exiting literature.

Conclusions
1. The conclusion should be presented in line with RQs.

Author Response

Thank you for  reviewing our manuscript and for the suggestions on how to improve it. Addressing your comments:

1 - We improved the introduction section to clearly specify the research objectives and also include a hypothesis statement.

2- We agree that the article, and the discussion section in particular, was quite long. We reworded some paragraphs in the discussion section to make them more concise. We also removed some paragraphs that were less relevant, while maintaining the most important points.

3 - We believe that our conclusions section already addresses the research objectives directly, with the first paragraph covering objective 1, and the second paragraph covering objective 2. Paragraph 3 in the conclusions is a higher level consideration about the implications of the findings of the study.