Study on Microbial Community Structure and Soil Nitrogen Accumulation in Greenhouse Vegetable Fields with Different Planting Years
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper „Study on microbial community structure and soil nitrogen accumulation in greenhouse vegetable fields with different planting years” is current and very well structurate.
The authors present a study case respectively the impact of the number of planting years on the structure and diversity of soil microbial community in greenhouse vegetable fields using real-time PCR (qPCR) amplification and 16S rRNA gene sequencing technology.
Theyer study was focused on the explore the intrinsic causes of soil quality degradation in order to preserve a healthy and stable soil ecological environment and provide a theoretical foundation for sustainable use of soil, soil flora stability, and high-quality production of vegetables in greenhouse vegetable fields. Also the study of the authors highlighted that the soil environmental factors were positively correlated with planting year and showed a cumulative trend.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your kind assistance and we appreciate all the time and efforts you put in the handling of our manuscript. At the same time, thank you for your approval of the manuscript and the research content.
Best Regards.
Sincerely yours,
Changsheng Zhao
E-mail: zhaochsh1980@163.com
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript corresponds to the subject of the journal and can potentially be accepted for publication. At the same time, the manuscript has many problems associated with insufficient validity of conclusions and weak statistical processing of data. The text of the manuscript also often requires editing. Below I will give specific comments on the text of the manuscript:
L 17: "content of factors" - please make the sentence meaning more clear. What does it mean?
L 18: "GSS"- please do not use non-commonly used abbreviations in the abstract
L 20, 22, 27 and in other parts of the manuscript: Do not use the outdated and incorrect term "flora". It is more appropriate in this case to use the words "microbial community" or "biota".
Introduction in general: Please specify the problem that the study is aimed at solving. What are the unresolved or controversial issues in this field of science? It would be good to formulate a hypothesis for your research.
L83-84: how many repetitions of each sample were selected?
L84: Please provide information about what kind of soil was used in greenhouses. It would also be good to give some information about the history of the use of these greenhouses - what crops were grown there all this time, how much fertilizer was applied annually on average, etc.
L90: "anti-spectrophotometric method"- what does it mean?
L93: you probably mean (NH4)2Fe(SO4)2 but not FeSO4, isn't it?
L93: cooking??? - please clarify this part of the method
Tables 2,3: Please provide statistical processing of the results, for example, ANOVA, to show the change in parameters and the effect of the cultivation time/the soil layer on these parameters.
L126-128, 138-141, 144-148, 156, 171-172, 191-193: This is a discussion of the results, not their presentation. Please move these parts of the text to the appropriate chapter of the manuscript.
L133: this sentence can be deleted because it only repeats the subtitle
L135: 'abudance significantly decreased"- please provide evidence of the relationship of these parameters
L149: Table 3 is titled as "Effect ...", but it does not show the effect of factors, just shows the mean (?) values of indicators. Use statistical methods to prove the effect.
L 152-154 and 178-180: should be "analysIs ... IS shown" or "analysEs ... ARE shown'. At the same time, these proposals can be completely removed in my opinion.
L187: It looks like part of the sentence has been lost
Figures: Axis symbols are barely noticeable and hard to read
Discussion: I am inclined to think that the results obtained have not been fully discussed. In many ways, the authors simply repeat the results described above without attempting to explain the mechanisms underlying the observed phenomena. For example, the nitrogen content in the soil is poorly discussed, although this was put in the title of the manuscript. Why does the content of mineral nitrogen in the soil increase in soils with an increase in the duration of cultivation?
L304: Why do you think the community structure is unstable? Which of the above data indicate a loss of stability?
L312-315: it is not clear what data supports this conclusion
Author Response
请参阅附件。
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The majority of my previous comments was taken into account by authors.
Despite the fact that the authors have not been able to support some of their conclusions with statistical data, I believe that the manuscript can still be accepted for publication in its present form.
