Effects of Film Mulching on Soil Microbial Diversity and Community Structure in the Maize Root Zone under Drip Irrigation in Northwest China
, Dongjie Pei 2, Hongtao Jia 1,* and Zhenhua Wang 2
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors1. Line 14: The research purpose is unclear.
2. Line 15: Please rephrase this sentence. Because the processing is not just about full-scale mulching, it should be different film mulching methods.
3. Line 16-17 and Line 53: In the abstract and introduction section, I'd like to ask what exactly are the microbial characteristics here.
4. Line 88-96: Please simplify the hypothesis and research purpose, and supplement the research significance at the end of the introduction.
5. Line 99-100: This sentence has problems in grammar and word order. I suggest that the author revise the language again.
6. Line 109: I suggest changing the title of Figure 1 to ' Geographical location of the study area '.
7. Line110: I suggest adding this sentence (The experimental research and field studies on plants complied with relevant institutional, national, and international guidelines and legislation.) to the material section.
8. Line 127: I suggest increasing the description of the number of days of film mulching in the experimental design section.
9. Line 146, under suitable soil conditions, the root depth of maize can generally reach 1-1.5 m. Why is the soil sample in the root area only 40 cm here?
10. Line 151: I suggest adding the model of the pH meter.
11. Line 243: I suggest that the saliency in the boxplot of Figure 3 should be consistent with the following boxplot, both represented by letters.
12. Line 336: Please add quantitative analysis in the results and analysis section of 3.5.
13. Line 366: I suggest that the discussion section be modified and condensed.
14. Line 433, “This differs from previous research results (Qiu et al., 2020)”, this sentence seems to have no end. No explanation was given for the inconsistent results.
15. I suggest increasing the discussion on the limitations of the study. Different soil texture, soil conditions, and other conditions will bring different research results.
16. I suggest that the figure in the manuscript be modified, bacteria and fungi can be represented by a and b, and the separation line in the middle of Fig.3 is also recommended to be removed.
Author Response
Dear manuscript reviewers and editorial staff of agronomy!
Thank you very much for your comments on the manuscript " Effects of Film Mulching on Soil Microbial Diversity and Community Structure in Maize Root Zone under Drip Irrigation in Northwest China". Your suggestions are very important, which have important guiding significance for the writing and scientific research of the paper. These pertinent suggestions are great encouragement and support for me. On the basis of careful consideration of the suggestions of reviewers, the thesis has been partially modified and improved one by one according to the suggestions of reviewers, as follows.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsEffects of Film Mulching on Soil Microbial Diversity and Community Structure in Maize Root Zone under Drip Irrigation in Northwest China
Here my comments:
1- I found several studies published on such topic on such crop and on the selected zone area as well.
2- The authors should be please following the instructions of the journal by using refs. as numbers, and so on
3 - please clarify the meaning of these numbers In Table 1:
5/13 6/15 6/28 7/7 7/15 7/27 8/6 8/14 8/25
4- please update the section of Introduction by adding very update refs. (e.g., 2024, 2023), and section on mulching process including types, problems and their benefits is needed, please
5- Please change the “2. Material and methods” to be plural as “2. Materials and Methods”
6- again, please the 2.3 Experimental design” needs to be clearer, as mentioned in Figure 2 mentioned that treatments will be T0, T3, and T5.
7- The authors need to mention all details about the mulching, please including which type and its degradation
8- all information about the used chemicals or instruments should be supplied including name and model, and manufacture country, in the entire MS.
9-Why the authors did not study soil quality indices along with the microbial activity.
10- Is that possible for the authors to add an economic evaluation including the costs of fertilization, irrigation, and mulching and other practices.
11- Why the authors already selected soil depths 0–10 (D1), 10–20 (D2) and 146 20–40 cm (D3) although maize has longer roots?
12- the values of pH are not real values but -long10 in Table 2, please not to be statistically analyzed and please remove letters of Duncan
13- Please check again the experimental design and treatments
Thanks and all the best
Comments on the Quality of English Languageneed moderate editing
Author Response
Dear manuscript reviewers and editorial staff of agronomy!
Thank you very much for your comments on the manuscript " Effects of Film Mulching on Soil Microbial Diversity and Community Structure in Maize Root Zone under Drip Irrigation in Northwest China". Your suggestions are very important, which have important guiding significance for the writing and scientific research of the paper. These pertinent suggestions are great encouragement and support for me. The modification has been uploaded by word.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript proposed by Effects of Film Mulching on Soil Microbial Diversity and Community Structure in Maize Root Zone under Drip Irrigation in
Northwest China‘’ is interesting. However, there are many questions to address.
1. Why are you giving the names of treatments as T0, then T3 and T5?
2. Did you remove mulching during the second-half growth period? How many days after sowing? What do mean by second-half growth period, what was growth stage during half growth period? Is it cost-effective half-growth stage mulching? Is it easy to remove mulching during the growth stage in the maize field?
3. In materials and methods, section also write cost of mulching/ha, provide full details.
4. What is reason, why SOM is increased in half growth period mulching compared to whole growth period mulching? Why AP, AK and pH did not vary significantly in all mulching periods, expect for heading and maturity periods?
Line92. The purpose of this study was: ………………
Line92. The field experiment was……………..
Line18. Write treatments in the abstract according to the Fig.2.
Line208. 3. Results
Add sub-headings in the discussion and discuss the results with reasons. The discussion is poorly written.
5. The T3 and T5 treatments significantly reduced the relative abundance of Sordariomycetes (by 16.81% and 5.73%) as compared to the T0 treatment (Figure 6). What is reason? Discussion in the discussion section.
6. The T3 treatment significantly increased the abundance of Eurotiomycetes by 38.06% and 31.27% as compared with the T0 and T5 treatments, respectively. Different treatments thus significantly affected the soil fungal community structure, while there was little effect of different soil layers. 6. What is reason? Discussion in the discussion section.
7. There were also no significant effects of soil layer depth on either fungal richness or diversity. What is reason? Discussion in the discussion section.
8. This is a contrasting result compared to the results you have presented above. The fungal community composition was also altered by the different film mulching methods (Figure 5). Must defend in discussion section. Somewhere you are telling us that film mulch showed significant effects, and somewhere you are writing that there was no effects of film mulching.
9. Concise conclusion section, provide us information on which is best mulching full or half growth stage mulching and why.
10. In the introduction section, after lines on the importance of maize in the world. Write the importance in China and also write about cultivated areas of maize in China ha. How water stress can affect maize yield, then write the importance of mulching to conserve soil moisture etc. Some information can be found here https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2024.108677 and https://doi.org/10.3390/w16020354
Goodluck
Comments on the Quality of English Language
Writing is poor and hard to understand
Author Response
Dear manuscript reviewers and editorial staff of agronomy!
Thank you very much for your comments on the manuscript " Effects of Film Mulching on Soil Microbial Diversity and Community Structure in Maize Root Zone under Drip Irrigation in Northwest China". Your suggestions are very important, which have important guiding significance for the writing and scientific research of the paper. These pertinent suggestions are great encouragement and support for me. On the basis of careful consideration of the suggestions of reviewers, the thesis has been partially modified and improved one by one according to the suggestions of reviewers, as follows:
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsEffects of Film Mulching on Soil Microbial Diversity and Community Structure in Maize Root Zone under Drip Irrigation in Northwest China
This MS discusses the topic of soil mulching and its important and impacts on soil biological activities in the in Northwest China under drip irrigation system.
Mulching in important agronomical practice and useful for pest management, weed control and supporting plant growth for increasing the crop productivity. One of the most impacts of mulching is improving the soil biological activity under such mulching
General comments:
1- Please follow the instructions of the journal by using refs. as numbers, section of Results (not Results analysis), and so on
2- Several studies already published on such topic on different crops such as
· Wang et al. (2021). Effect of Plastic Mulching on Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Cycling-Related Bacterial Community Structure and Function in a Dryland Spring Maize Field
· Tang et al. (2022). Effects of mulching film on soil microbial diversity and community of cotton
·Zong et al. (2023). Effects of practicing long-term mulched drip irrigation on soil quality in Northwest China
· Zhang et al. (2023). The layout measures of micro-sprinkler irrigation under plastic film regulate tomato soil bacterial community and root system
· Gao et al. (2024). Effects of ridge mulching and rain harvesting patterns on microbial diversity in maize rhizosphere soil
3- The novelty of this MS is not 100% due to many similar published articles on such crop and such selected zone area.
4- The main treatments in the MS according to Figure 2 and other tables and figures, the treatments are 6 not 3 as follows:
T0 = no mulching during the whole growth period,
T1 = NO mulching only in the first half growth period
T2 = NO mulching only in the second half growth period
T3 = mulching only in the first half growth period
T4 = mulching only in the second half growth period
T5 = full mulching
If your Figure 2 is corrected and if I am understanding right, please check and correct in whole MS, please
Thus, this MS needs more work by answering the following comments to be ready to publish by agronomy journal.
More detailed comments:
5- Introduction section please needs more improvements such adding very update refs. (mainly 2024, 2023), the paragraphs of this section need one on mulching (mainly why mulching, which types, problems and their benefits), etc.
6- Why the title focusses on the “Northwest China”? this requires explanation to the readers in section 2.1 Experimental location and why this study carried out in such area.
7- Please change the “2. Material and methods” to be plural as “2. Materials and Methods”
8- What does mean:
“The green maize variety “ZD958,”? this is not right, please correct
9- Section of “2.3 Experimental design” needs to be more clearer,
Why the authors in Figure 2 mentioned that treatments will be T0, T3, and T5. This is not correct because the authors have already 4 treatments not 3. Why they did not use the normal following order like T0, T1, T2, and T3 with explaining the meaning of the treatment. Please modify this figure to be clearer including the main treatments, along with measured parameters as a flowchart, please with adding some photos of this work, please
10- Line 124, the authors mentioned that:
“The test film used was transparent, with a thickness of 0.01 mm and width of 70 cm, and was produced by Xinjiang Tianye Company (Shihezi, China). The characterization and which type of these films or mulching are needed? Is this film degradable or what?
11- In Table 1, please clarify the meaning of these numbers:
5/13 6/15 6/28 7/7 7/15 7/27 8/6 8/14 8/25
12- Please provide all information about the used chemicals or instruments including name and model, manufacture country, and purity of chemicals in the entire MS.
13- Can the authors provide some soil quality indices along with the microbial activity.
14- Did the authors measure the soil temperature under such used mulching? This is important factor mainly control the bio local activity as well
15- Can the authors provide an economic evaluation for this production to be included the costs of fertilization, irrigation, and mulching and other practices.
16- On which base, the authors elected these depths for their study as maize has longer roots:
“Soil samples were collected from within 0–10 (D1), 10–20 (D2) and 146 20–40 cm (D3) of the root zone of the maize plants (Figure 2)”. May be ref. is needed, thanks
17- In Table 2, the values of pH are not real values but -long10, thus not correct to be statistically analyzed please remove Duncan letters form the means
18- Based on the NOT corrected experimental design and treatments, please correct the entire MS starting from the abstract as mentioned:
“
And till the conclusion, as mentioned:
“Our results confirmed that mulching treatments, especially T3, played an important role in improving the SM and ST conditions throughout the growing periods, and simultaneously increased the soil nutrients (e.g. SOM and 487 TN) and pH.”
The authors should explain which part in T3 the authors mean (mulching in the first half of growing period or the second and in present or absent of mulching?
The MS needs major revision
thanks
Author Response
Dear manuscript reviewers and editorial staff of agronomy!
Thank you very much for your comments on the manuscript " Effects of Film Mulching on Soil Microbial Diversity and Community Structure in Maize Root Zone under Drip Irrigation in Northwest China". Your suggestions are very important, which have important guiding significance for the writing and scientific research of the paper. These pertinent suggestions are great encouragement and support for me. On the basis of careful consideration of the suggestions of reviewers, the thesis has been partially modified and improved one by one according to the suggestions of reviewers, as follows
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsOK
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThanks
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authorsmany thanks for your corrections
please for next time,
any changes must be highlighted in the revised MS
thanks
