Decision Support System for Selecting Mung Bean Cultivation Sites in Central Thailand Based on Soil Suitability Class
, Sirinapa Chungopast 1,*, Kiattisak Sonsri 1, Kridsopon Duangkamol 2, Suwicha Polfukfang 2 and Prakit Somta 3
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
Thank you for your revision, I satisfied with authors response.
Author Response
We gratefully appreciate that you are satisfied with our revised version. We are pleased to thank you for your kind review of our manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
The manuscript entitled: ”Decision support system for selecting mung bean cultivation sites in central Thailand based on soil suitability class” presents study of practical significance. The manuscript is quite well prepared, however contains some drawbacks.
1. Please provide in the end of the introduction why it is important and why demands special application.
2. Could you provide some information about the maps which are the reference 21. The website (http://dinonline.ldd.go.th/Login.aspx?service=4) is not available without registration. It is not available for people from abroad of Thailand. Basic information about the service are necessary, e.g. sources of data, types of data, owner of the website.
3. Some of the variables which are presented in Table 1 are not clear, e.g. what is topography? It is slope? What is Consolidation layer? What is nutrient status, which nutrients are taken into consideration and what is low nutrient status?
4. Table 3 contains many abbreviations which are not clear. There are soil series or mapping unit as well soil complexes. It is not clear what each abbreviations means. Please consider add full names with explanations in supplementary.
5. What coordinate system was used for the map presented in Fig. 2? It would be better if the coordinates were presented as longitude and latitude (WGS84). In the map percentages are calculated without inclusion of low land. What is low land and why it was not included in calculation of the percentages?
6. The screenshots in Fig. 3 are not in English. Please add short explanation wat is presented on each screenshot.
7. In the discussion comparison to other similar solutions should be presented. It can be for other crops and other countries in the world. Please discuss advantages and disadvantages of the application which was prepared in comparison to other similar applications or geoportals.
8. Why the mung bean plantation was selected as crop for which the application was prepared. There are other crops for which similar application would be useful?
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2
We are pleased to thank you for your review, which provides useful comments and suggestions for our manuscript. We have revised and/or provided some information responsible for your comments point-by-point as below.
Comments and Suggestions for Authors:
The manuscript entitled: “Decision support system for selecting mung bean cultivation sites in central Thailand based on soil suitability class” presents study of practical significance. The manuscript is quite well prepared, however contains some drawbacks.
- Please provide in the end of the introduction why it is important and why demands special application.
Author Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have provided the information regarding the importance of application development in the introduction part as follows:
“In agriculture, the demand for mobile applications is increasing since smartphones are constantly being developed and used for a variety of purposes, such as management of pests and diseases in field crops [20]. Nevertheless, the development of applications based on relevant soil information to assist the farmers in selecting optimal areas for economic crops, especially mung bean remains imperfectly established in Thailand. Taking the advantages of soil maps and mobile application, it may be able to establish a decision support system for aiding the farmers to choose the suitable areas for mung bean cultivation with easy access.” Please see page 2, lines 64–71.
- Could you provide some information about the maps which are the reference 21. The website (http://dinonline.ldd.go.th/Login.aspx?service=4) is not available without registration. It is not available for people from abroad of Thailand. Basic information about the service are necessary, e.g. sources of data, types of data, owner of the website.
Author Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have provided more detailed information, including sources of data, types of data, owner of the website, and necessary procedures to obtain the data, as follows:
“Primary information was sourced from soil maps at a scale of 1:25,000 and relevant soil data for all provinces in the central region that were obtained as a shapefile from the Land Development Department, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Thailand [21], using the steps depicted in Fig. S1.” Please see page 2, lines 79–82 and Figure S1 in Supplementary Materials, page 1.
- Some of the variables which are presented in Table 1 are not clear, e.g. what is topography? It is slope? What is Consolidation layer? What is nutrient status, which nutrients are taken into consideration and what is low nutrient status?
Author Response: Thank you for your comment. We have provided more detailed information about some variables used as limitation types in Table 1 as follows:
“a Topography = slope that is classified into undulating (5–12%), rolling (>12–20%), and hilly (>20%). b Consolidation layer = soil depth from surface soil to hardpan, which is a dense layer of the soil, such as a laterite crust, a clay pan, or a cemented spodic horizon. c Nutrient status = parameter that is evaluated from five soil chemical properties, namely, soil organic matter, cation exchange capacity, percent base saturation, available phosphorus, and available potassium.” Please see page 5, lines 201–206.
- Table 3 contains many abbreviations which are not clear. There are soil series or mapping unit as well soil complexes. It is not clear what each abbreviations means. Please consider add full names with explanations in supplementary.
Author Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have revised by providing the full names of soil series, mapping unit, and soil complexes in the Supplementary Materials. The existing full names can indicate whether those are soil series, mapping unit, or soil complexes. Please see page Table 3, pages 6–7 and Table S1 in Supplementary Materials, pages 2–9.
- What coordinate system was used for the map presented in Fig. 2? It would be better if the coordinates were presented as longitude and latitude (WGS84). In the map percentages are calculated without inclusion of low land. What is low land and why it was not included in calculation of the percentages?
Author Response: Thank you for your comment. We previously used the UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) coordinate system. However, your suggestion is also great; we thus revised the coordinate in Fig. 2 by presenting it as longitude and latitude (WGS84). Please see Figure 2, page 9.
In general, the lowland is the areas that are primarily used as rice cultivation in Thailand. We therefore focused on the upland areas that are commonly used for field crops like mung bean in this study. As a result, the lowland was excluded for calculation in this present study. Nevertheless, future work will also focus on such areas.
- The screenshots in Fig. 3 are not in English. Please add short explanation wat is presented on each screenshot.
Author Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have provided a short explanation in English for each screenshot.Please see Figure 3, page 10.
- In the discussion comparison to other similar solutions should be presented. It can be for other crops and other countries in the world. Please discuss advantages and disadvantages of the application which was prepared in comparison to other similar applications or geoportals.
Author Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have provided more discussion by comparing with other similar solutions in other countries. The advantages and disadvantages of the application are also described as follows:
“Previous work in Indonesia developed a tool for land suitability evaluation by transforming the FAO framework into a smart mobile application for rubble, cocoa, and oil palm. They observed that the usability of the system had a very good classification, which is that all dimensions are between 3.68 and 4.01 [27]. In the present study, we also developed a decision support system for mung bean plantation based on the dataset obtained from the soil suitability classification in the platform of mobile application, i.e., Mung Bean Soil Suitability, in addition to soil map (Fig. 3). This developed application recently covers 22 provinces in the central region of Thailand. Nevertheless, in the future, further development of a mobile application for selecting the suitable areas for mung bean cultivation will cover all mung bean planting areas in Thailand. Previous works have demonstrated that the developed applications are mostly focused on describing pests and diseases [28,29]. In addition to those mobile application, we developed the Mung Bean Soil Suitability as an optional application that can be used to select the suitable areas for mung bean plantation. The developed application can be easily accessed by farmers without any fee. The application might also assist farmers in making a decision whether to shift from former crop cultivation into mung bean cultivation, an alternative protein source crop.”Please see pages 10–11, lines 270–286.
“Since the application contains only the soil data in areas of the 22 provinces in central Thailand, this may cause the limitation of utilization for the users from the other regions. In addition, because the paddy crop (lowland soil) areas were separated from the classified areas, this resulted in no data for such locations in this application. Thus, further development for covering those remaining areas should be persuaded in future work.” Please see page 11, lines 310–314.
- Why the mung bean plantation was selected as crop for which the application was prepared. There are other crops for which similar application would be useful?
Author Response: Thank you for your comment. This work was carried out under the research project “Breeding Food Crops in Responsible for Global Climate Change”. The mung bean is one of the vital food crops in this project that can be used as an alternative protein source. In addition to its good cultivar of mung bean obtained after breeding processes, the soil suitability class for crop cultivation is also important, leading to the development of the current application with easy access to assist the farmers in making a decision about mung bean cultivation. As the possibility of using a developed decision support system for mung bean cultivation was supported by the present study, it would be possible to apply the principle and technique used in this study to other crops.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
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
Dear Author,
I have gone through your manuscript. Your topic is quite interesting as it aims to develop a decision support system for a mung bean cultivation site. However, there is no any scientific evidence to support your statement i.e. yield, morphology or physiological performance of mung bean under each soil suitability class. Do you have data in that? If yes, please provide some information on mung bean performance on each soil suitability class.
For your abstract: please re-check some of the English grammar such as article. As this is a research article, pleaser provide your data results in number in the abstract, it is not just your text explanation.
Introduction: Your story is good, however, please provide more number of references and most of your references are not from the research articles.
Materials and methods: Please provide your methods in detail.
Results: This part, authors just explained results in text and discussed. This part should only be results, not a discussion. PLEASE move some of the discussion to the discussion part.
Discussion: please discuss more about the potential and limitation of mobile application and provide suitable references.
Conclusion: rewrite this part and be criticised on your results.
References: Please check the citation style of the journal.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors use a 1976 FAO guideline to determine the land use potential for growing mung beans in Thailand. They limit the FAO guideline to criteria applicable to Thailand. It is not clear from the manuscript how these adaptations to national conditions were made. There was no scientific development of the FAO guide used. A validation of the derived soil suitability classes is also not provided. Thus, the manuscript is merely a use case for an established method.
The first part of the results section concerns the distribution of suitability classes within individual provinces in Thailand and a listing of the reasons for assigning less suitable classes. This information is of limited interest to an international readership. In the second part of the results, the design and functionality of a mobile application is explained, with which the soil suitability assessment for mung bean cultivation can be accessed by farmers and other users via cell phone. From a scientific point of view, this part of the presentation of results is also of little relevance.
The short discussion chapter focuses on the usefulness of mobile and user-friendly applications for decision making in land management. Since no evaluation in the form of validation has been done for the results of the paper, a critical discussion of the limitations and a discussion of future development potential cannot be done.
Overall, the submitted work is more a description of the technical basics of a mobile application and not a scientific and hypothesis-based investigation. Therefore, a publication in Agronomy is not recommended.
