Effects of Biochar on Soil Properties and Tomato Growth

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

the paper ‘Effects of Biochar on Soil Properties and Tomato Growth’ by Calcan et al. is a description of the effect of soil application of biochar, alone or with foliar fertilizers on some chemical and physical soil properties and yield of tomato. The paper has some ideas of novelty, related at the comparison of different soils, however it presents some main critical points that need to be adjusted before publications and are listed below:

1)    Statistics is not reported in table 1. Was analysis of variance carried out? In text it is reported that one value is lower or higher than another, but without a mean separation this is pure speculation. First analysis of variance must be carried out and if the treatments effect is significant, then means must be separated

2)    Amount of nutrients per plant applied with foliar treatments must be reported in material and method

3)    Table and figures must stand alone, consequently all abbreviations must be explained in headings, legends or footnotes

4)    In paragraph results and discussion, only results are reported, it lacks almost completely of any discussion of the results obtained, I would suggest to separate Discussion from Results section, for clarity reasons

5)    The paragraph ‘Conclusion’ is redundant, and this is not correct. Conclusions should summarize the main findings of the paper, with no repetition  

Other minor points are:

·       Often it is used the expression ‘without and with’ fertilizer treatments. It is not correct to indicate two words one the opposite of the other. The treatments must be indicated clearly and their unique name used throughout the text, here an example: untreated control, biochar, foliar, etc.

·       Often it is reported ‘nutrient content’ erroneously, actually it is nutrient concentration

·       In keyword list, the words biochar and tomato growth are redundant since they are already in the title

·       All the abbreviation must be spelled out at their first appearance (i.e. ANOVE, UPB, etc)

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall this is a useful piece of research and is worth publication, subject to some revision:

my main reservations are in some aspects of the data treatment

1. For example in table 2 there does not seem proper regard for significant figures; for example can you measure pH accurate to 3 significant figures in biosolids?

2. Fig 4 the SD is NOT a measure of accuracy/uncertainty. You should ue confidence intervals for the mean (+/-t*s/sqrt(n)). To show this is true consider comparing a measuremet with 10 replicates compared to 100. Both will have similar SDs but measuring it 100 times would surely give a much more reliable estimate of the mean (more confident)

3. Overall more use of graphs/tables to illustrate your results as it i somewhat difficult to distil out of the text what are the main differences described

4. What is fig 5 showing? Some annotation would be useful to emphasise differences between the plants

5. line 156 conc of available P determined spectrophotometrically - need to be more specific what spectro method

6. The conclusion should summarise the results; no need to describe methods (first paragraph redundant in a conclusion)

You should consider doing factor analysis on your daya; this is more powerful than PCA. By rotating the data to maximise the variability due to a fewer number of variables and minimise the others. It can give a clearer picture of what is causing the differences between treatments

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 3 Report

The Manuscript entitled-“Effects of Biochar on Soil Properties and Tomato Growth” was been critically reviewed. The impact of the biochar on different soil has been investigated in this manuscript and the finding of the study is interesting. A Biochar addition affects the soil properties and stimulates plant growth.  The manuscript is well written and nicely discussed with relevant studies. On the basis of the finding of the manuscript I recommend the publication of this manuscript with minor suggestions given below:  

Line no 35: Recommended to add https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2021.111379 along with the references 1-11 or the author can replace one of the reference from 1-11 with recommended references  

Figure no 4: Instead of using abbreviations in the axis use full words, in place of H-Height (cm), NL-No of Leaves, CD-Collar diameter (mm), RV-Root volume, 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc