Conception and Development of Recycled Raw Materials (Coconut Fiber and Bagasse)-Based Substrates Enriched with Soil Microorganisms (Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi, Trichoderma spp. and Pseudomonas spp.) for the Soilless Cultivation of Tomato (S. lycopersicum)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Authors have properly addressed the suggestions of the reviewer
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have conducted a good revision of the manuscript attending to the recommendations I made.
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 presented work addresses a current problem in agriculture. P deficiency during plant growth can lead to low crop productivity. The experimental design is adequate but I suggest some changes to improve this scientific work and for a better understanding by the readers.
- Ln 16. In the South of where?
- Ln 35-39. Shorten this part.
- Ln 93. I suggest changing “Experimental system” to “Experimental design”.
- Section 2.2. Did you test a modality with a commercial AMF product + Trichoderma harzianum + Pseudomonas fluorescens?
- Ln 109. Describe %F and %M the first time they appear.
- Section 3. In this section, only the results were described. I suggest improving this section to better fit in a "Results and discussion" part.
- Figure 1. X-axis only from 0 to 10. Slight differences cannot be appreciated in such a wide range.
- Ln 171. “The conductivity values were HIGH before planting”. Change “high” for a more accurate word.
- Ln 172-173. Please, add the units.
- Ln 179. “…for THEM physicochemical…” Do you mean “the”?
- Figure 3. Set the letters before the description of the image. I.e.: “a) 4 weeks after planting; b) 6 weeks after planting….”
- Ln 227. Why is the nutrient uptake better with S3 and S4?
- Figure 8. Remove the italic font.
- Ln 332. Phosphorus without a capital letter.
- Ln 344. “…P deficiency was less than 10 % in S1 at week 8 while it was still 25 % AND in 344 S2, S3 and S4.” Erase and in capital letter.
- Conclusions part. It is not a conclusion part. It fits more in a discussion part. Only from Ln 430 to Ln 442 can be used in a conclusion part. Rewrite this section.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for the constructive comments for improving this manuscript.
We took into account all of them and tried to answer the best way.
1. Ln 16. In the South of where? We precised of Europe
2. Ln 35-39. Shorten this part. We precised of Europe
3. Ln 93. I suggest changing “Experimental system” to “Experimental design”.
4. Section 2.2. Did you test a modality with a commercial AMF product + Trichoderma harzianum + Pseudomonas fluorescens?
No, because internal analyses made on this commercial product showed the presence of other PGPB (Rhizobium and Bacillus)
5. Ln 109. Describe %F and %M the first time they appear. Change has been made.
6. Section 3. In this section, only the results were described. I suggest improving this section to better fit in a "Results and discussion" part.
We tried to improve this part by adding more discussion.
7. Figure 1. X-axis only from 0 to 10. Slight differences cannot
be appreciated in such a wide range.
Figure has been improved
8. Ln 171. “The conductivity values were HIGH before planting”.
Change “high” for a more accurate word.
We changed by « reached the value… »
9. Ln 172-173. Please, add the units. It has been added
10. Ln 179. “…for THEM physicochemical…” Do you mean “the”? their
11. Figure 3. Set the letters before the description of the image.
I.e.: “a) 4 weeks after planting; b) 6 weeks after planting….”
It has been changed
12. Ln 227. Why is the nutrient uptake better with S3 and S4?
We modified the sentence, that was confusing.
13. Figure 8. Remove the italic font. We modified the figure
14. Ln 332. Phosphorus without a capital letter. We changed it
15. Ln 344. “…P deficiency was less than 10 % in S1 at week 8 while it was still 25 % AND in 344 S2, S3 and S4.” Erase and in capital letter. We changed it
16. Conclusions part. It is not a conclusion part. It fits more in a discussion part. Only from Ln 430 to Ln 442 can be used in a conclusion part. Rewrite this section.
We completely rewrited this section.
SAP analyses have been realized with the different plant parameters in one side (in columns) and time (T4, T6, T8), substrates and treatments in lines. Unfortunately, despite the time taken to do it, no more information has been highlighted by this process, in comparison with analyses of variance presented in
our work. The table 6 being more clear than the graph obtained with the SAP analyses, we decided to maintain it. In our point of view, put the graph in the manuscript will « slow down » the reading of the manuscript.
We revised the manuscript following your recommendations and we hope that it will fulfill your expectations.
Best regards,
Sylvie Masquelier and co-authors
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript entitled “Interest of beneficial micro-organisms in soilless production of
tomatoes” reports a very interesting work aiming to evaluate substrates and beneficial microorganisms for tomato soilless production. The subject and experimental strategy justify being considered for its publication in Agronomy. Nevertheless, there are some issues to be addressed before in order to improve the manuscript.
General
Abstract. Most of the abstract is focused in the scientific background without any mention of the main results and conclusions. Please include this to improve this section.
Statistics. Although experimental design (random blocks) included 6 replicates for each treatment no formal statistical analysis was performed. This is the major shortage of this manuscript, especially in a field (Agronomy) where statistics are so commonly used. For example, considering Figs 4 & 5 reported standard deviations, it is very difficult to support authors observations where no evident significant differences among treatments can be observed.
Results of each response are presented in a singular and not very clear way: focus on microorganism or focus on the substrates. That means, that substrates effects are confused when results focus on microorganisms are presented, and vice versa? This is probably the reason that standard deviation on figures 4 & 5 are so high. Finally, results from fig 6 to the end do not provide any statistical analysis.
Overall, I recommend consulting a statistician in order to substantially improve analysis and discussion of the results. The work is done but statistical analysis is essential here.
Effect of phosphorous availability. It is not clear why the experiments were carried out without phosphorous supplementation since the beginning? Waiting until phosphorous deficiency was observed does not seems to be justified. If the main objective of this work was to assess the effects of substrate and beneficial microorganisms on tomato production, it could be better to avoid any effects from uncontrolled variable. This does not seem to be the case of phosphorous availability in this work (before and after supplementation). Please discuss this point.
Specifics
Page 6 lines 179 – 183. “Substrates used in this study have been analyzed for them physicochemical proper- 179 ties. Attention has been focused on the concentration of phosphorus, which plays a key 180 role in mycorrhizal development [29-31]. The results of the analysis (Table 2) showed that 181 the concentration of phosphorus available for plants is 355 ppm, so the fertilization was designed in relation to this”. However, table 2 only shows washed coco fiber composition. Did the authors take in consideration sugar cane bagasse phosphorous contribution?
Page 9 line 262 “…were observed without significant difference”; Page 11 line 289 “…but this was not significant.”; Page 11 line 296-297 “….compared to the control without significant difference between them”. All made mention of significant differences but no formal statistical analysis was provided.
Page 17 Lines 434 – 436. “Then, at 6 weeks, 434 phosphorus had to be added to the nutrient solution, because the plants had exploited all 435 the phosphorus reserves present in the substrate”. Have you measured this? Please clarify
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for the constructive comments for improving this manuscript.
We took into account all of them and tried to answer the best way.
We improved the abstract by adding the main results and conclusions.
We improved the manuscript by adding statistical analyses. We tried our best with analyses of variance. SAP analyses have been also realized with the different plant parameters in one side (in columns) and time (T4, T6, T8), substrates, and treatments in lines. Unfortunately, despite the time taken to do it, no more information has been highlighted by this process, in comparison with analyses
presented in our work. The table 6 being more clear than the graph obtained with the SAP analyses, we decided to maintain it. In our point of view, put the graph in the manuscript will « slow down » the reading of the manuscript.
Effect of phosphorous availability. It is not clear why the experiments were carried out without phosphorous supplementation since the beginning?
We tried to answer to your question by this: The available phosphorus would be used by the plant and the AMF would not develop [38-40]. Since the P content in the coco fiber is high (335 ppm, see section 3.1), in order to allow the microorganisms (especially AMF) to better establish themselves in
the roots of the plants, plants were watered with reverse osmosis water for the first 9 days (200 cc per day).
Page 6 lines 179 – 183. “Substrates used in this study have been analyzed for them physicochemical proper ties. Attention has been focused on the concentration of phosphorus, which plays a key role in mycorrhizal development [29-31].The results of the analysis (Table 2) showed that the concentration of phosphorus available for plants is 355 ppm, so the fertilization was designed in relation to this”. However, table 2 only shows washed coco fiber composition.
Did the authors take in consideration sugar cane bagasse phosphorous contribution?
Unfortunately, analyses of bagasse was not available. We added the following sentence « In our experimentation, the interest of bagasse as a part of substrate (Substrate S2) has been demonstrated. Nevertheless, physio-chemical analysis of bagasse is essential in order to understand the real potential utilisation of such material, which is also a recycled material like the coconut fiber »
Page 9 line 262 “…were observed without significant difference”;
Page 11 line 289 “…but this was not significant.”; Page 11 line
296-297 “….compared to the control without significant difference between them”. All made mention of significant differences but no formal statistical analysis was provided.
See comments above.
Page 17 Lines 434 – 436. “Then, at 6 weeks, 434 phosphorus had to be added to the nutrient solution, because the plants had exploited all 435 the phosphorus reserves present in the substrate”. Have you measured this? Please clarify
No, we did not measure it. We changed the sentence by « we hypothesize that… »
We revised the manuscript following your recommendations and we hope that it will fulfill your expectations.
Best regards.
Sylvie Masquelier and co-authors.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript revision has been made conscientiously. However, I believe that the sections of the article, in general, are not well developed. I think there is confusion with the content of each section.
- The introduction part should present the problem and if there is any, some background information that allows the reader to know what has been conducted on the topic of study.
- The materials and methods should contain a description of the methods used. There should be no description of the background.
- The results and discussion part is well addressed.
- The conclusion part should be clear, concise, and short since the other aspects of the article have already been described in the previous sections.
I encourage the authors to use this description of the sections of the article in order to give a clearer view of the article and thus provide a simple and easy-to-understand reading for the reader. Other minor recommendations are the followings:
The material and methods section is designed to descript the methods used in the assay. Thus, I do not understand why a background presentation is made in this section. Please, review lines 104-131 and move them to another more appropriate section.
- Instead of writing "ANALYSES OF VARIANCE" I should recommend writing "ANOVA" if it is the statistical method used.
- Figure 2. The "y" axis had the wrong units.
- Table 2. Why did only appear coco fiber? And the rest of the substrates?
- Conclusion part. This part should provide clear and concise conclusions of the work conducted. Therefore, this part should be short, clear, and, concise, without background descriptions or exposition of problems.
Reviewer 2 Report
Although experimental design is strong enough to separate effects between factors (microorganisms and substrates), a proper statistical analysis is still lacking. Author´s only include one factor instead a two-way factor statistical analysis. There is no need to present results "focus on microorganisms" or "focus on substrates".
On other hand, sugar cane phosphorus contribution to the substrate was neglected and it can be a major source of uncontrolled variation affecting the discussion of the results. Measurements of phosphorus along the cultures could partially solve this bias.
