Different Organic Fertilisation Systems Modify Tomato Quality: An Opportunity for Circular Fertilisation in Intensive Horticulture

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The effect of various amendments on tomato properties has been examined. 

The results are valuable and interesting.  However, some sections need to be corrected.

1. Introduction

- Line 68: There is only one word: "management."

- The authors did not clearly indicate the novelty of the study on the background of the available literature data.

2. Materials and Methods

- line 81: Why was the cultivar ‘Surcal’ chosen? Why only one cultivar? The effect of fertilization may depend on the cultivar. It would be better to examine more cultivars. 

- lines 89-91: Why were such doses chosen? 

- The caption for Table 2 is missing.

- line 123: "Colour evaluation" should be the heading of a subsection. Furthermore, the subsection headings are not numbered.

3. Results and discussions

- lines 189, 193, 212, etc.: The year of the reference is not needed.

- Footnote for Table 5: It has been written "Different letters in the same row indicate significant differences between treatments".  Is it correct? Shouldn't there be a column instead of a row?

- Why is the standard deviation only in Table 5 and not in other tables?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer First of all, thank you for your effort in thoroughly reviewing the manuscript. We have reviewed all the suggested points in the document. About "Line 81: Why was the cultivar ‘Surcal’ chosen? Why only one cultivar?
The effect of fertilization may depend on the cultivar.
It would be better to examine more cultivars."
Responding to this question, the same cultivar has been used,
to avoid the occurrence of differences promoted by the change of cultivar.
The results of this experiment are part of a trial of 8 crops over 4 years. The Surcal cultivar was selected because it is a cultivar highly valued for its nutritional properties and flavor. Thanks for you work
Best regards

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors

The manuscript has greatly improved. However, I still have a few concerns.

I suggest this tittle is situation for the manuscript:  Effects Of Organic Amendments Derived From Previous Crop Residues On Tomato Yield And Quality:

The statement opportunity for circular production, should be stated in the conclusion instead.

The authors should design tables following the Instructions to Authors provided by the Journal.

Under section 3.2, I still don’t understand why authors have not subjected the results in Table 6 to statistical analysis. This makes the statement, “Regarding the cations concentration in the suspension solution, in absolute values, K+ showed differences
between treatments, with the highest value in IF and GM and the lowest value was observed in CR treatment” , true BY CHANCE because there is no INFERENTIAL STATISTICS APPLIED.

The variables placed horizontally on table 6 should be shifted to the columns and statistics analysis shown with a, b, ab etc. indicated as well as the p values.

The short paragraphs in the introduction should be combined. For example, paragraphs 1 and 2 should be treated as one. The introduction should have 5 paragraphs, at most 6. Please kindly edit the work. For instance, the hypotheses and objectives should all be on the same paragraph.

 

I have a concern with extraction of cations, was it really ammonium nitrate? Or authors meant ammonium acetate?  Please clarify or insert a reference. Also, the methods should have references added to them. For example, “Available nitrogen nitric [NO3-] was extracted with Calcium sulphate and determined with an electrode (XX et al., 1998).

By the way, I have never come across the words “nitrogen nitric’ in soil science. We usually call this Nitrate Nitrogen. Therefore, change all the terms Nitrogen Nitric to ‘Nitrate Nitrogen, written as N--NO3.

 

Finally, the manuscript should extensive editing for grammatical and spelling errors that are visible right from the tittle. Authors should follow the ITA provided and always submit properly edited manuscripts for reviews.

Thank you.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer First of all, thank you for your effort in thoroughly reviewing the manuscript. We have reviewed all the suggested points in the document.

Kind regards

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript has been corrected according to my suggestions.   I recommend accepting the present form of the manuscript.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the valuable comments and suggestions.

Kind regards

Maria del Carmen Salas

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors

The manuscript has improved except not applying the inferential statistics to paremeters presented on table 6. Thank you.

Author Response

First of all, thank you for the review that has contributed to significantly improve the article. But about applying the statistics to the data in table 6. We cannot perform the statistical analysis since we lack repetitions, although 15 subsamples were taken for each soil sample, these were mixed and the soil mixture was analyzed.

If I have not understood what you are asking me, please tell me again what you mean.

Thanks

Maria del Carmen

 

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is within the scope of Agronomy, presenting important findings on a circular strategy to improve the sustainability of intensive horticultural production systems. Below are the comments to improve on the manuscript.

The tittle does not reflect the specific objectives of the study. The tittle should be connected to the main goal. E.g. ‘evaluate the effects of organic amendments produced from previous crop cycle residues on yield and quality of tomato”.

Abstract

The treatments are not clearly presented. “The main goal of this study was to evaluate the effects of organic amendments produced from previous crop cycle residues at different maturity stages, such as fresh biomass, compost and vermicompost, on yield and quality of tomato.” The words at different maturity stages is confusing. Delete it and also explain the 6 treatments clearly in this sentence.

Introduction

This section has clearly been written. However, there are no studies that have been included on the use of vegetable wastes to increase soil N, P, or K and improve lycopene. It is obvious that crop residues or organic amendments will improve yield and quality of crops, but we can’t support this minus reviewing literature. Please include a few studies that have compared vegetable crop resides and inorganic fertilizers on the yield and quality of tomatoes or vegetables while pointing out the gap in knowledge. For instance, mention, MMMM et al., (2019) showed that application of 6 t/ha of vermicomposting, or goat manure increased yield by 25% while improving the antioxidant content….This was attributed to…..Clearly, show what effects vegetable wastes integration into cropping system have been observed by previous researchers.

Objectives of the study ware not clearly indicated. Please identify important specific objectives instead of broad objectives.

Methods

Methodology used to analyze soil chemical properties have not been shown. Please do write them in brief. E.g. soil pH was anlsyed from 1:5 solution…by elctrodes …(Model..). Soil total N by Kjeldahl method….., exchangeable cations, OM by…

Also indicate when soil samples were taken and prepared prior analysis.

Results/discussion/conclusion

Since we are comparing different treatments, we do not use the words decreased. Instead use; treatment GM was significantly higher or lower by x% or than treatment Z

In Lines 167 and 169, what caused the discrepancies in the results of Murmu et al., 2013 and Wang 2017? Clearly explain in line with your results. What makes chemical fertilizers more superior than organic, use literature? Explain why IF was not significantly different from V3 and V9.

In Lines 182-183, what cause this higher value? Explain

From Table 5: Authors should consider eliminating compounds of less focus. It seems from the discussion that lycopene, total phenolics, carotene, total tocopherols, total sterols, ascorbic acids and total phenolic contents attracted interest. These could be the best dataset to represent tomato quality besides moisture content. In the present state, the data is too congested and confusing to readers. Moreover, conventionally, the dependent variables should have been placed in the horizontal while independent varibales on the vertical (left) as shown below. This will allow for easy comparison.

		Moisture			Total Carotenoid
IF
GM
CR
CO
V3
V9

 

 

The title influence of soil chemical properties on tomato quality should have included yield too. By the way, authors have not explained how soil chemical properties varied among the 6 treatments. The PCA should have come after that explaining soil chemical properties. Moreover, no statistical analyses were conducted on the soil chemical properties vs the treatments. We cannot tell whether treatments really differed in their effects on soil properties. It is by “chance” minus such statistical analysis. Also, the Nitric N is not clear. Most studies will explain available N, which is composed of ammonium N and nitrate N. Again, there is no categorization of soil chemical properties i.e. available N, Phosphorus, exchangeable cations (Ca, Mg, K), micronutrients (Fe, cu, Zn, Mn etc). Lastly, there is confusion because the soil dataset was not narrowed down to focus on either macro nutrients or micronutrients or both and should be selected but not presenting everything, loosing focus. Please kindly select the best dataset that can explain issues of soil fertility straight forward, e.g. N, P, K and other exchangeable cations. Please indicate the units for CEC, and why was this CEC value high even though clay soils should have high CEC?

The discussion section should be a stand-alone section or combined with results (Results and discussions). In the present state, the results contain discussions and then a section of discussion and conclusion comes in which is not right. Please decide to either use results and discussion or Results (Only results), then discussion (Only discussion) and finally Conclusions.

The relationship between yield and Nitric N could be true. However, the lack of statistical analysis on soil chemical properties makes the conclusion less concrete. Please conduct analysis and present in this article.

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Fairly interesting paper but needs major revision in each section. The abstract must contain your treatments in the form of methodology without examples. The introduction is not comprehensive to justify the work. The materials and methods section cannot be easily followed. The paper is lacking a scientific explanation of your results. Don't discuss the work in the Results section. Please, one paragraph of discussion is not acceptable. I have attached the MS with some comments.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf