Winter Survival, Yield and Yield Components of Alfalfa as Affected by Phosphorus Supply in Two Alkaline Soils
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Der Authors,
I read your manuscript and I congratulate you, because I see that your research needed a lot of work. Moreover, the high level of your knowledge in th range of fertilization is visibe in the whole manuscript. However I have some comments and suggestions:
1. line 78-79: I think that ypur hypotsesis is to general. The sentence from this hipothesis is videly known without a necessity of the research. For this reason hypothesis should be describe in more details. Moreover, I suggest to avoid the personal form in the sentences ("We hypothesize...", "Our objective"). Scientific texts should be written in an impersonal form.
2. Lines 86-91: The data described the soils in filed experiment should be describe in the Table (instead the description on the text).
3. Figure1: This Figure shows the meteorological data only for one year (I suppose 2020), while in the text and caption you write about period 2019-2021. Please verify it.
4. Line 108: Please add the information about the source of germination rates.
5. line 127: I think that the letter symbols in the formula will be better than texts
6. Subsection "Atatistical analysis": In this subsection you write about two softwares using to conduct statistical analysis (at the begging the SPSS software was shown, while ath the end of the subsection the SAS software were describe). Which software was used?
7. Figures 3 and 4: I don't see the results of significance of correlation. In the Figures there are only R-square values; in my opinion, the results of significnce of correlation coefficient and slope should be presented (especially in the case of relatively low values of R-square).
8. References list: there is a numbering error after the 26th position. For this reason other references issues can be incorrect described in the references list (for example - in the text you used reference number 44, while in the reference list thre are only 43 references).
I hope that my suggestion will be useful at the correction of your manusript.
Best regards!
Reviewer
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.doc
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors:
Reasonable phosphorus application is very important for alfalfa production, the authors conducted out a field experiment in 2019 to 2021 growing season of alfalfa to study the effects of phosphorus supply on winter survival, yield and yield components of alfalfa in two alkaline soils. I think this manuscript can be published on Agronomy-Basel after minor revisions. The specific review comments are as follows:
1. In the Abstract section, the authors stated that “Applying a moderate amount of P fertilizer enhanced alfalfa winter survival and increased forage yield; the plant height and shoot mass made more contributions to higher forage yield than other yield components; the suitable P fertilizer application rates for greater winter survival were less than that for higher forage yield.” What is “a moderate amount of P fertilizer”? It is recommended that the authors compare and analyze different fertilization rates and draw such a conclusion. Please Please provide some specific data. “To pursue higher winter survival rates, the suitable P fertilization rates for aeolian sandy soil and silt loam soil are 60.5 kg ha-1 and 58.0 kg ha-1, respectively.” There is no such dosage in the experimental design, so it is recommended to explaining how to obtain such application rate of P.
2. P62-63 “Fertilization with P often increases forage yield and affects the yield components. “ Please supplement some references here.
3. What level is the phosphorus content in the soil in the tow types of soil in this study? What is the low P standard? Please supplement this information in the Materials and Methods.
4. P95-96 “Therefore, the winter of 2020-2121 was more severe than that of 2019-2020 for alfalfa survival.” I think there is no need to analyze the temperature difference between two years, and please remove it in the discussion section.
5. What do the line and column distributions in Figure 1 represent? The resolution ratio of the images in this manuscript is low, and the authors must redraw them.
6. The cultivars used in the study were Zhongcao No.3, and Gannong No.3. Why the authors choose these two varieties? What is the planting area in Inner Mongolia?
7. P133 Has the dry matter reached constant weight after drying for 48 hours?
8. The table in the manuscript is not standardized, the authors should modify the tables in the paper. Please place a table on one page by adjusting the row spacing.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
