A Revised Equation of Water Application Efficiency in a Center Pivot System Used in Crop Rotation in No Tillage

Comments

Responses by authors

Line 35-36. “…but decreased significantly with crop growth (reduction from 9% at V4 to 49% at R1).” Is it a reduction from 9% to 49%? Please agree with the results of the article.

We are thankful for this observation. Since results related to DUpa reduction are very extensive, and given the word limit of the abstract (200 words), we decided to delete that phrase and kept “but decreased significantly with crop growth“.

Line 53-54. “…c) evaporation, either from the soil or the plant; e) plant leaf architecture, and f) soil characteristics” Wouldn't it be better to sort by c) d) e)?

The order of letters was corrected

Line 89. “… in areas where water is a scarce and/or expensive resource.” You only need one "and" and "or".

We think that water may be a scarce and expensive resource at the same time; but it may also occur that it may be scarce but not expensive, or not scarce but expensive...

Line 130-139. Could you please add some pictures about the equipment and the layout in this section so that the readers can understand it easily?

Figure 1 shows the layout of the pivot circles. We replaced the legend (Location of INTA Manfredi Experimental Station in Córdoba province, Argentina, South America) with “Location of INTA Manfredi Experimental Station in Córdoba province (center), Argentina, South America (left) and images of the machine and layout circles of the central pivot (right).

Line 143. Is "UDpa" or "DUpa"? Please be consistent throughout the article.

UDpa was replaced with DUpa.

Line 158. “... and if CI >17, then CI=17.” Isn't the CI range between 7 and 15? Where did you get the 17?

The CI: coarseness index was proposed by Keller and Bliesner (1990) and is valid for 7CI17; if CI<7, then CI=7 and if CI >17, then CI=17.

There was a mistake in line 158. The correct value is 17.

Line 161. Same as (e).

UDpa was replaced with DUpa

Line 228-235. In line 228: “...sprinklers above the canopy (3 m above the ground)”. In line 234: “...above the canopy (3.20 m)”. In Table 1: "Sprinkler height" is 3.0m. Do they need to be consistent?

There was a mistake in line 234, it was corrected.

Line 335. “Irrigation intensity increased from 5 to 7 mm h-1 in the successive segments (Table 3)”. How did you get "5" and "7"? The value must be consistent with that in Table 3.

We replaced “5 and 7 mm h^-1  with 5.7 and 77.4 mm h^-1, in agreement with Table 3.

Line 339-341. "Segments" in Table 3 is missing the number 2.

Table 3 was corrected

Is the "CI" in Table 3 calculated using Equation 3? Doesn't it range from 7 to 15?

Values of CI in Table 3 were corrected.

In addition, the fifth group of "wetted length" in Table 3 is "55.2" which is the maximum value. Can you explain it?

Wetted length of the fifth group is 55.2 m, since this segment has the highest number of sprinklers (20). This comment was added in the text.

Is part 3.6.1 a result? Whether can be put in the second part of the materials and methods?

Subsection 3.6.1 presents results of the Ta and Sa components, based on the method explained in subsection 2.7.

Line 650. The formula format is incomplete (the problem with parentheses).

The format error was corrected.

Line 663-664. “…has a minimum of 0.9 and a maximum of 0.97”. The maximum and minimum values should be exactly as shown in Table 9.

The mistake was corrected by replacing “has a minimum of 0.9 and a maximum of 0.97” with “has a minimum of 0.895 and a maximum of 0.967, i.e., between 3.3 and 10.5% of losses of the applied irrigation”, as shown in Table 3.

Line 687. Should one of the table 9 headers "DUDpa" be "DDUpa"?

DUDpa was replaced with DDUpa

Comments

Responses by authors

Congratulation on your hard work and high quality manuscript. I find your manuscript very well written, easy to read with well-chosen section and quality presentation of the study results. Please find some minor suggestions here below.

We appreciate your favorable comments about our work.

L76 – suggestion:

Tissue density has an important role in water retention and 76 transport [14], yet there is no consensus in the literature about the water storage process, 77 known as retention in residues [15,16] or interception [17].

The suggestion was incorporated.

L98 – please write the author name, i.e. The aim of 98 this work was to adapt the equation proposed by Keller et al. [2], …

The suggestion of incorporating Keller and Bliesner was accepted.

 L112 – please reconsider the „semester“ here. Maybe te „period“ would fit better

The suggestion was accepted.

 Figure 2. – kindly check if cycle is proper term to use. For example, soybean growing period?

The suggestion was accepted and the term was changed in Figura 2.

 344-346 – please rewrite the sentence since it is not clear enough

The original sentence was “Mean values of DUpa (control) calculated with pa values other than 80% differed from the mean values of HHCU (Table 4), in agreement with the equation proposed by Keller and Bliesner[2], where DUpa varies with higher or lower pa values”; the phrase “where DUpa varies with higher or lower pa values” was removed for a better understanding.

 L348 – kindly, give the author name

“Keller and Bliesner” was added.

 L370 – maybe it would be useful to ad wind speed data in Material and method section. At least during the days that measuring where taken

Wind speeds are presented in Table 7 of Results section along with the values of Re equation.

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