Virtual New Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Water Input, and Greenhouse Gas Emission Indicators for the Potatoes Consumed in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments:

1.      I would like to suggest to reconstruct the title of the manuscript. It is unclear and indecisive.

2.      Kindly rewrite the statement of line nos. 17-22. The statement is illusive and improper with broken English. Please improve the English and rewrite the statement.

3.      The English of the manuscript is very bad and should be reconsidered for improvement during revision.

4.      Kindly divide the long sentences into smaller sentences as to make better understanding validation of the facts.

5.       In the introduction part, I suggest the authors to incorporate a small brief about virtual parameters and virtual resources. What do you mean by virtual here? The brief is expected to make a connection between readers and the article.

6.      In line nos. 55-56 is the word ‘unsuitable’ appropriate for the statement? Did you mean it is difficult to estimate virtual N input for the mentioned reason? Kindly reconsider the statement and improve that part.

7.      In introduction second paragraph, can you enlighten about the factors or conditions that are prerequisites for the estimation of virtual N?

8.       “Potatoes rank as the fourth largest food crop in the world, as well as in China” please provide literature support/citation against this statement.

9.      Line no. 141 what is “CO₂e”? Kindly make clear what you want to state?

10.   Line nos. 145-146. What are the significant findings of the study regarding net GHG balance by Huang et al., 2021 and how does it influence your study? A small brief is expected.

11.   Line nos. 150-152, unclear statement, please rewrite the statement and make the fact clear.

12.   Doesn’t waste potatoes have an impact on GHG emissions? How do you justify your exclusion of potatoes that are thrown as waste or given to animal would not effect in overallvirtual nutrient and GHG accounting?

13.   Under section 2.5., please elaborate the method used by Wang et al., 2020 to estimate uncertainty?

14.   Section 2.5. Line nos. 240 – 242; 246 – 248, can you mention the equation which was used to determine the uncertainty of the indicators?

15.  .In section 2.5. (line no. 304) can you mention any threshold level/dose under which fertilizers N should be optimized/applied in potato field?

16.  What are the characters of the site(s) that determined the dependency of VNF, VNNF, VPF, and VPNF of potatoes? Which characters of the site(s) are highly conclusive and significant for estimating such virtual parameters? Kindly incorporate them in the manuscript (especially in Section 3.1. and 3.2.

17.   Under section 3.1., 3.2., 3.3.you have mentioned disparities in values. Can you identify and mention the reasons behind such disparities in result?

18.   From Governmental point of view, I suggest you to include a section mentioning the current policies in China that can reduce GHG emission, nutrient leaching and agricultural waste generation from similar agricultural crop-practices. You are suggested to mention your thoughts on improvement of such policies for the betterment cum sustainability of agriculture and climate.

19.  The mention and identification of future research needs are missing for similar studies in future.

 

 

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kindly reviewing of our manuscript agronomy-2006564. We highly appreciate your valuable comments and suggestions on our manuscript. We have made careful modifications to the revised manuscript based on the comments and suggestions. The following are the critical comments and the detailed responses to the reviewers’ comments:

Reviewer1’s comments:

• I would like to suggest to reconstruct the title of the manuscript. It is unclear and indecisive.

Thanks for your helpful comment and we have revised the title of the manuscript to “Virtual new nitrogen, phosphorus, water inputs, and greenhouse gas emission indicators of the consumed potatoes in China” as the Reviewer3’s suggestion, hope it is clear and decisive.

• Kindly rewrite the statement of line nos. 17-22. The statement is illusive and improper with broken English. Please improve the English and rewrite the statement.

We have revised the statement to “The results showed that VNNF, VNPF, VIWF, VTWF and VCF varied from 17.8 ± 7.8 to 30.1 ± 17.0 kg N kg⁻¹ consumed potatoes’ N, 8.4 ± 5.0 to 18.8 ± 11.3 kg P kg⁻¹ consumed potatoes’ P, 0.3 ± 1.0 to 1.8 ± 1.4 m³ IW kg⁻¹ consumed standard yield (except three mainly rain-fed potato regions), 4.8 ± 2.2 to 9.3 ± 3.7 m³ total water kg⁻¹ consumed standard yield, and 3.4 ± 1.5 to 5.9 ± 2.4 kg CO₂ equivalent kg⁻¹ consumed standard yield, respectively, under conventional practice in the six potatoes production regions”. Hope it can be improved.

• The English of the manuscript is very bad and should be reconsidered for improvement during revision.

Thank you for your comments on the language. We have further thought about the language problem and carefully modified the language.

• Kindly divide the long sentences into smaller sentences as to make better understanding validation of the facts.

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. We accept your suggestions and divided long sentences into smaller sentences as to make better understanding for the potential readers. As we revised the long sentence in the abstract to “The results showed that VNNF from 17.8 ± 7.8 to 30.1 ± 17.0 kg N kg⁻¹ consumed potatoes’ N, VNPF from 8.4 ± 5.0 to 18.8 ± 11.3 kg P kg⁻¹ consumed potatoes’ P, VIWF from 0.3 ± 1.0 to 1.8 ± 1.4 m³ IW kg⁻¹ consumed standard yield (except three mainly rain-fed potato regions), VTWF from 4.8 ± 2.2 to 9.3 ± 3.7 m³ total water kg⁻¹ consumed standard yield, and VCF from 3.4 ± 1.5 to 5.9 ± 2.4 kg CO₂ equivalent kg⁻¹ consumed standard yield, under conventional practice in the six potatoes cultivation regions”, and we throughout revised the long sentences in the main text of the revision to make better understanding.

• the introduction part, I suggest the authors to incorporate a small brief about virtual parameters and virtual resources. What do you mean by virtual here? The brief is expected to make a connection between readers and the article.

Thank you very much for your suggestions. We added a sentence as the following “hereafter defined as the resources input or environmental footprints for produce per unit final consumed resource embodied in foods or per unit final consumed food products in their field production stages’ to show the meaning of virtual parameters and virtual resources.”, lines 31 to 33 in the revision.

• In line nos. 55-56 is the word ‘unsuitable’ appropriate for the statement? Did you mean it is difficult to estimate virtual N input for the mentioned reason? Kindly reconsider the statement and improve that part.

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. We have revised the associate statement to “the current VNFs of different foods will underestimate the virtual N input to the food system…...”, lines 57 to 59.

• In introduction second paragraph, can you enlighten about the factors or conditions that are prerequisites for the estimation of virtual N?

We added a statement as “To track the actual resource inputs and environmental effects of the final food consumption in the food production areas, virtual N factor (VNF) of foods was proposed, which defined as the initial new N……, lines 51-52”, to enlighten about the conditions that are prerequisites for the estimation of virtual N.

• “Potatoes rank as the fourth largest food crop in the world, as well as in China” please provide literature support/citation against this statement.

Thank you very much for your comments. We have added two references to support our statement, line 97.

• Line no. 141 what is “CO₂e”? Kindly make clear what you want to state?

CO₂e represents CO₂ equivalent calculated from soil GHG emissions and associate agricultural input and management, we have already given abbreviation when it first appearance in line in the second paragraph of the revised manuscript, line 90 in the revision.

• Line nos. 145-146. What are the significant findings of the study regarding net GHG balance by Huang et al., 2021 and how does it influence your study? A small brief is expected.

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. We added a sentence as following “We found all potato cultivation regions act as a net GHG source and showed large site dependency, varying from 2242.3 ± 737.1 kg CO₂e ha⁻¹ for NE to 3682.7 ± 1024.8 kg CO₂e ha⁻¹ for NC, and 836.8 ± 267.6 kg CO₂e ha⁻¹ for NE to 1824.9 ± 512.2 kg CO₂e ha⁻¹ for NC under local conventional and optimized measures, respectively [24]. We further calculated VCF indicator of potato based on the aforesaid net GHG emission, commodity ratio (Table S1), and the ratio between household available food items’ supplies and their final consumption [17,18].”, to show the significant findings of the study regarding net GHG balance by Huang et al., 2021. As lines 176 to 186.

• Line nos. 150-152, unclear statement, please rewrite the statement and make the fact clear.

We revised this sentence to “The conventional measures refer to local farmers’ experience management practices, which mainly preoccupation with harvest yields, by applying relatively high water and fertilizer” to make it clearly express. Lines 188-189.

• Doesn’t waste potatoes have an impact on GHG emissions? How do you justify your exclusion of potatoes that are thrown as waste or given to animal would not effect in overall virtual nutrient and GHG accounting?

Thank you for your question and we understand your concern. We added a paragraph as “Generally, waste and loss potatoes have no impact on GHG emission at field cultivation process. Nevertheless, waste and loss potatoes between the available potatoes supplies and its final consumption by households will generate some impact on virtual GHG emission of the per unit final consumed potato by households”, to make it clear. In this study, we focus the virtual new nitrogen, phosphorus, water inputs and greenhouse gas emission indicators of the consumed potatoes as the revised title description, in the calculations of virtual nutrients and GHG emission, we use the mean ratio of the available tuber (including mainly potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams and tania) supply for human to the final tuber consumption by households in China, which was calculated as 7.7 ± 0.5 kg tuber supply (excluding tuber storage variation, net import of tuber and tuber for other uses) for per kg final tuber consumption during 2010 and 2015 based on our previous study [18,24], hence the exclusion of potatoes that are thrown as waste or given to animal would not effect in overall virtual nutrients and GHG accounting of the per unit final potato consumption. We added above sentence in revision to make it clear. Lines 223 to 228.

• Under section 2.5., please elaborate the method used by Wang et al., 2020 to estimate uncertainty?

We revised the sentence to “the uncertainty is about 6.5% for the ratio of the original tuber supply to final consumption, which was calculated by dividing the standard deviation of the available tuber supply for human to final tuber consumption by the mean value of the original tuber supply to final consumption by households during 2010–2015 in the reference”, to make it clear for reader. Lines 280-283.

• Section 2.5. Line nos. 240–242; 246–248, can you mention the equation which was used to determine the uncertainty of the indicators?

We added the error propagation equation was used for calculating the uncertainties of different indicators, as lines xx to yy in revision, as the response to reviewer3s’ comments 4 and 6. Lines 285-300,

• In section 2.5. (line no. 304) can you mention any threshold level/dose under which fertilizers N should be optimized/applied in potato field?

Thanks for your suggestions. We added the reduction proportion of chemical fertilizer N input in the revision, as following “increasing in potatoes’ yield by decreasing chemical fertilizer N by 12.5%, 19.5% and 13.2% in NE, NC and MLRYR regions, respectively, and combining optimized……”, lines ; and we did the same revision for fertilizer P, as lines 339 to 340 in the revision.

• What are the characters of the site(s) that determined the dependency of VNF, VNNF, VPF, and VPNF of potatoes? Which characters of the site(s) are highly conclusive and significant for estimating such virtual parameters? Kindly incorporate them in the manuscript (especially in Section 3.1. and 3.2.)

Thanks for your comments and suggestions. We added some sentences to show the control factors of the VNF, VNNF, VPF, and VPNF of potatoes, as following “The lower VNF of potatoes in NE mainly caused by the integrated impacts of relatively less chemical fertilizer input and higher yield output in NE than in other regions [24]. In contrast, the highest VNFs of potatoes in NC and SC, mainly caused by chemical fertilizer N inputs increase by 46.5%–47.5% and potatoes’ yield lower by 11.0%–14.8% in two regions than NE region”, lines 304-310, and “The lowest VPF of potatoes in NE (0.9 ± 0.5 kg P kg⁻¹ harvested potatoes’ P) is because of it obtained highest yield with lower by 27.4%–71.0% of chemical fertilizer P input than the rest five regions; On the contrary, the highest VPF of potatoes in MLRYR region (1.8 ± 1.1 kg P kg⁻¹ harvested potatoes’ P) mainly caused by it used the highest chemical fertilizer P input only received the lowest yield”, lines 363 to 368.

• Under section 3.1., 3.2., 3.3.you have mentioned disparities in values. Can you identify and mention the reasons behind such disparities in result?

Thanks for your comments. We added some sentences to show the main control factors of the VNF, VNNF, VPF, and VPNF of potatoes, such as the responses to the former comment 16.

• From Governmental point of view, I suggest you to include a section mentioning the current policies in China that can reduce GHG emission, nutrient leaching and agricultural waste generation from similar agricultural crop-practices. You are suggested to mention your thoughts on improvement of such policies for the betterment cum sustainability of agriculture and climate.

Thanks for your comments and very helpful suggestions. We added some sentences as following “In recent years, the Chinese government has proposed “The 14th Five-Year Plan for National Agricultural Green Development (2021)”, and "The 14th Five-Year Plan for national livestock and poultry manure utilization, combination of farming and animal husbandry construction plan (2021)”, etc. These plans aim to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, ammonia emissions, nutrient leaching and agricultural waste generation by optimizing agricultural crop-practices at field level. Virtual resources input and GHG emissions of the food trade studies could help for further finding the key influencing factors of resources input and environmental costs of different foods from harvest to table, except for field management practices, and give some guidance for reducing resources input and environmental costs of the food trades from the whole field production-supply-consumption chain.”, lines 40 to 50 in the revision; and we added some description in the discussion as following “Our results also highlight that the VNNF, VNPF, VIWF, VTWF, and VCF indicators of per unit final consumed potato have large reduction potential by improving the commodity ratio of potatoes and especially reducing the loss and waste of potatoes in its supply-consumption chain, except for increasing in potatoes’ yield by optimizing fertilizer N and P inputs in NE, NC and MLRYR regions, and optimizing water management practices and/or the cultivation modes and plant density of potatoes at field level.”, lines 493 to 498; and we have a description in conclusion as following “Hence, the improvement measures of the VNNF, VNPF, VIWF, VTWF and VCF indicators of potatoes, should pay more attention on closing the gaps between the available potatoes supply and its final consumption by reducing potatoes’ loss and waste in its supply-chain, except for improving potatoes’ yield and its commodity ratio by optimizing fertilizer N input in NE, NC and MLRYR regions, and water management practices and/or the cultivation modes and density of potatoes at field level. Our findings could contribute to improve of the exist policies for the betterment cum sustainability of agriculture and climate”, lines 541 to 547 in the revision, to show our thoughts on improvement of the exist policies for the betterment cum sustainability of agriculture and climate.

• The mention and identification of future research needs are missing for similar studies in future.

We added some sentence as following “Our results highlight the significance of studying regional-scale VNNF, VNPF, VIWF, VTWF, and VCF indicators of per unit final consumed potatoes in different cultivation regions from consumption perspective, for enriching parameters of model simulation and environmental assessments of food consumption by households. Future similar research is quite needed for other food crops, because the underestimation of GHG emissions, and aforesaid new N and P and water inputs for the final consumed potatoes by households could happen for other crops as well.”, lines xx, and “With the increasing volume and frequency of food trade, similar work is urgently needed for other crops, because the differences in virtual resource inputs and environmental intensities might happen to other Chinese crops under different soil-climatic conditions and management practices, in different production regions.”, lines 498-501 and 548-552, to mention future research needs.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

After reading the manuscript, I think the subject is of great importance from different perspectives, including environmental issues such as potential pollution and greenhouse gas emissions because of agricultural practices. However, there are a few points that make me think that this work is not ready for publication: 

 

- I think the title is misleading because there is not really an analysis of the spatial pattern of these indicators, but only the comparison between six regions. Also, why “virtual NEW nitrogen…” and not just virtual nitrogen?

- The English is not good enough, causing that several sections of the manuscript are hard to understand. I did not mark all the errors because they are too many, but the text needs a revision by a native English speaker.

- The writing style does not help either to understand the content of the paper. For example, the Introduction should start with the most general subject and then move to the more specific ones. Then in Results, too many figures (numbers) are mentioned (all of them contained in the Figures), making it hard to understand the ideas, considering that there are 10 indicators and 6 regions involved in this paper.

- I have serious doubts that atmospheric N and P should be included as virtual N and P (same with precipitation in the case of water). A clear justification is needed for doing so. 

- Apparently all the data in this manuscript were gathered and used for a previous publication (Huang et al., 2021). Actually, some of the indicators used here are simply the inverse version of the indicators used before. This situation weakens the novelty of this manuscript, adding now the losses that occur until the consumption stage. The other problem is that important information is omitted because it is in this other paper, such as the characteristics of the six regions.

- The discussion is not really informative about the reasons that explain the differences between regions and types of agricultural management. I think this is key to make this manuscript interesting for the readers of this journal. Otherwise, I think this should be submitted to a journal more related to public policy.  

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kindly reviewing of our manuscript agronomy-2006564. We highly appreciate your valuable comments and suggestions on our manuscript. We have made careful modifications to the revised manuscript based on the comments and suggestions. The following are the critical comments and the detailed responses to the reviewers’ comments:

Reviewer2’s comments:

After reading the manuscript, I think the subject is of great importance from different perspectives, including environmental issues such as potential pollution and greenhouse gas emissions because of agricultural practices. However, there are a few points that make me think that this work is not ready for publication:

Thank you very much for your affirmation of our research. We have further thought about the concerns you pointed out, and at the same time, we have made corresponding changes in response to your comments and answer your comments as follows.

• I think the title is misleading because there is not really an analysis of the spatial pattern of these indicators, but only the comparison between six regions. Also, why “virtual NEW nitrogen…” and not just virtual nitrogen?

We revised the title to “Virtual new nitrogen, phosphorus, water inputs, and greenhouse gas emission indicators of the consumed potatoes in China”, integrates with the reviewers’ suggestion.” And revised some sentence to show the reason we calculated virtual new N input as following “Chemical fertilizers N, irrigation water N, atmospheric N deposition and BNF were considered as the new N imported from outside the food system in many studies, which distinction with the N recycled inside the food system, such as organic manure, crop residues, food wastes, and sludge applied to fields. The ratio of organic fertilizer application area to total sown area of potato is relatively low, meanwhile, the amounts of N, and P from organic fertilizer were not directly reported in the literature as that of chemical fertilizers, and they can not be easy to calculate because the complex types of organic fertilizers and no available data on the contents of N and P in some organic fertilizers. We are therefore emphasis on the new N and P inputs for potato at field level in this study.”, lines 135 to 144.

• The English is not good enough, causing that several sections of the manuscript are hard to understand. I did not mark all the errors because they are too many, but the text needs a revision by a native English speaker.

Thank you for your comments on the language. We have further thought about the language problem and carefully modified the language in the revision as response to Reviewer1s’ comment.

• The writing style does not help either to understand the content of the paper. For example, the Introduction should start with the most general subject and then move to the more specific ones. Then in Results, too many figures (numbers) are mentioned (all of them contained in the Figures), making it hard to understand the ideas, considering that there are 10 indicators and 6 regions involved in this paper.

Thank you very much for your comments on the writing style of our manuscript. We adjusted the order of some sentence in the original manuscript in the revision, to make the Introduction to be easily understood for the reader. In addition, we deleted some numbers in the revision, which contained in the figures, to make the revision can be understood easily.

• I have serious doubts that atmospheric N and P should be included as virtual N and P (same with precipitation in the case of water). A clear justification is needed for doing so.

We added a sentence in lines 135 to 144” to make it more clear, as the response to Reviewer2s’ comment 1.

• Apparently all the data in this manuscript were gathered and used for a previous publication (Huang et al., 2021). Actually, some of the indicators used here are simply the inverse version of the indicators used before. This situation weakens the novelty of this manuscript, adding now the losses that occur until the consumption stage. The other problem is that important information is omitted because it is in this other paper, such as the characteristics of the six regions.

Thank you very much for your comments. Yes, most of the data in this manuscript were used in our previous study, but not all. We calculated the VNNF, VNPF, VIWF, VTWF and VCF indicators of potatoes under conventional and optimized measures in the six cultivation regions from consumption perspective, based on the final consumed potatoes or potatoes’ N by households and the collected database of new N and P, irrigation water and total water inputs in our previous study, combining with the new collected commodity ratio of potatoes at field level and the differences between available potatoes’ supplies and its final consumption, as description in lines 192 to 198 in the revision. In addition, the indicators used in our manuscript are not simply the inverse version of the indicators used before, as our mentioned in equations 6 to 10, we considered the commodity ratio of potatoes at field level and the differences between available potatoes’ supplies and its final consumption calculated aforesaid five indicators from household consumption side.

We added a paragraph to show the characteristics of the six regions, as following “In 2017, NE (Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning), NC (Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi), NW (Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang), MLRYR (Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai), SW (Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Guizhou, Tibet), and SE (Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan) accounted for 5.9%, 6.8%, 31.6%, 7.5%, 45.1% and 3.1% of the total potato cultivation area, respectively.”, lines 127 to 132.

• The discussion is not really informative about the reasons that explain the differences between regions and types of agricultural management. I think this is key to make this manuscript interesting for the readers of this journal. Otherwise, I think this should be submitted to a journal more related to public policy.  

Thanks for your comments. We added some sentences to explain the differences of the reported indicators among different regions, such as “The lowest VNF of potatoes in NE (1.8 ± 0.7 kg N kg⁻¹ harvested potatoes’ N) mainly caused by the integrated impacts of relatively less chemical fertilizer input and higher yield output in NE than in other regions [24]. In contrast to NE region, the highest VNFs of potatoes were 3.0 ± 1.3 kg N kg⁻¹ harvested potatoes’ N in NC and 3.0 ± 1.2 kg N kg⁻¹ harvested potatoes’ N in SC, which mainly caused by chemical fertilizer N inputs increased by 46.5%–47.5%, meanwhile the yield lower by 11.0%–14.8% in two regions than that in NE region.”, lines 304 to 310; and “The lowest VPF of potatoes in NE (0.9 ± 0.5 kg P kg⁻¹ harvested potatoes’ P) is because of it obtained highest yield with lower by 27.4%–71.0% of chemical fertilizer P input than the rest five regions; On the contrary, the highest VPF of potatoes in MLRYR region (1.8 ± 1.1 kg P kg⁻¹ harvested potatoes’ P) mainly caused by it used the highest chemical fertilizer P input only receive the lowest yield [24].”, lines 363 to 368; “The IWUEs in the NE, MLRYR, SW and SC regions are significantly lower than the reported values in the reference [43], because mainly rain-fed potato fields in four regions.”, lines 412 to 414; “The lowest VIWF value in SC region is because it obtained similar yield as MLRYR, and NC, while only used 15.5%–21.8% of irrigation water than that in MLRYR and NE regions.”, lines 429 to 431; “The lowest GHGI of potato in NE was mainly caused by it obtained the highest yield with relatively low chemical fertilizers N input and almost no power used for irrigation under rain-fed conditions.”, lines 467 to 469.

 

Thanks for the all precious comments again! We look forward to hearing from you again regarding the manuscript. We would be glad to respond to any further questions and comments you may have.

Best regards.

Reviewer 3 Report

The study is interesting and yields relevant results. The methodology is transparent and sound; the results are well presented, and the discussion is adequate. However, the manuscript contains linguistic errors, some inaccuracies, and format issues that should be fixed before publication. Therefore, I require revision about the following aspects.

1.     In general, the manuscript requires a thorough English edition before publication.

2.     The statement of the problem was not clearly indicated. It requires more explanation.

3.     Most sentences are lengthy (4-6 lines) in the manuscript and these sentences deter the understanding of a reader. Thus, I suggest authors reduce the size of sentences in their writings.

4.     Some important information about the study site was also indicated to be in previous studies (e.g., Huang et al., 2021) and it is difficult to clearly understand the site conditions, and how the computation or the analysis was done. Therefore, I suggest, the authors must provide the most important abridged information in a table or other form appropriate to the article.

5. I also suggest revising the title. One suggestion: Virtual new nitrogen, phosphorus, water in-puts, and Greenhouse gas emission indicators of potatoes in China.

6.     Specific comments are made on the manuscript itself.

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Responses to Reviewers’ Comments

Thank you very much for your kindly reviewing of our manuscript agronomy-2006564. We highly appreciate your valuable comments and suggestions on our manuscript. We have made careful modifications to the revised manuscript based on the comments and suggestions. The following are the critical comments and the detailed responses to the reviewers’ comments:

Reviewer3’s comments:

The study is interesting and yields relevant results. The methodology is transparent and sound; the results are well presented, and the discussion is adequate. However, the manuscript contains linguistic errors, some inaccuracies, and format issues that should be fixed before publication. Therefore, I require revision about the following aspects.

Thank you very much for your affirmation of our research. We have further thought about the concerns you pointed out, and at the same time, we have made corresponding changes in response to your comments and answer your comments as follows.

• In general, the manuscript requires a thorough English edition before publication.

Thank you for your comments on the English edition. We have further thought about the language problem and carefully modified it, as the response to Reviewer1s’ comment.

• The statement of the problem was not clearly indicated. It requires more explanation.

We added some sentence and revised the order of some sentences in the Introduction to make the aims of study more clarity as response to reviewer2s’ third comment.

• Most sentences are lengthy (4-6 lines) in the manuscript and these sentences deter the understanding of a reader. Thus, I suggest authors reduce the size of sentences in their writings.

Thank you for your comments on the writing style of our manuscript. We were carefully thought about this problem and revised the length of some sentences in the revision, try to make the reader can easily understand.

• Some important information about the study site was also indicated to be in previous studies (e.g., Huang et al., 2021) and it is difficult to clearly understand the site conditions, and how the computation or the analysis was done. Therefore, I suggest, the authors must provide the most important abridged information in a table or other form appropriate to the article.

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. We added the data on New N and P utilization, irrigation water consumption, net GHG balance and yield of per unit area in the six potatoes cultivation regions under conventional and optimized measures in Supporting Information text as Table S3. And we added the calculation equation of net GHG balance in the revision (equation 1), lines 168-169, and detailed described the error propagation equation of mathematical statistics used in this study (equations 12 and 13), lines 294-295 in the revision.

• I also suggest revising the title. One suggestion: Virtual new nitrogen, phosphorus, water inputs, and Greenhouse gas emission indicators of potatoes in China.

Thank you very much for your suggestion. We calculated virtual new nitrogen, phosphorus, water inputs, and Greenhouse gas emission indicators of per unit potato in China from consumption perspective in this study. It is difference from the associate virtual new nitrogen, phosphorus, water inputs, and Greenhouse gas emission indicators at field level. Hence, we modified the title to “Virtual new nitrogen, phosphorus, water in-puts, and Greenhouse gas emission indicators of the consumed potatoes in China”, integrates with the reviewers’ suggestion.

• Specific comments are made on the manuscript itself.

Thanks for your patience and detailed comments. We revised the manuscript ‘point-to-point’ according to the specific comments marked in original submitted manuscript. Such as we added the data on New N and P utilization, irrigation water consumption, net GHG balance and yield of per unit area in the six potatoes cultivation regions under conventional and optimized measures in Supporting Information text as Table S3; added the calculation equations for the net GHG balance, and the uncertainty analyze, and revised the mistakes in the original equation 7, etc., as the response to the former comment 4.

 

Thanks for the all precious comments again! We look forward to hearing from you again regarding the manuscript. We would be glad to respond to any further questions and comments you may have.

Best regards.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is considered for publication. However, more english edition is required before publication. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kindly reviewing of our manuscript agronomy-2006564R1. We highly appreciate your comments and suggestions on our manuscript. We have made careful modifications to the revised manuscript and edited the language of the revision using the MDPI English editing service. Sincerely hope the revision can meet the publishing requirements.

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors made a big effort in improving the quality of the manuscript. I think they responded to my comments fairly well. However, the English is still hard to understand in parts of the manuscript, so I suggest extensive language editing before accepting it for publication.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kindly reviewing of our manuscript agronomy-2006564R1. We highly appreciate your comments and suggestions on our manuscript. We have made careful modifications to the revised manuscript and edited the language of the revision using the MDPI English editing service. Sincerely hope the revision can meet the publishing requirements.