Influence of Compost and Biological Fertilization with Reducing the Rates of Mineral Fertilizers on Vegetative Growth, Nutritional Status, Yield and Fruit Quality of ‘Anna’ Apples

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

Dear Authors,

 

The manuscript concerns the current issue of reducing the use of mineral fertilizers in favor of organic products as well as the use of PGPM. However the issue is interesting, the paper requires significant corrections due to its chaoticity.

A separate Discussion section should be included. Currently, when describing subsequent research results, authors often refer to basic literature data concerning the positive impact of organic fertilizers on selected soil parameters. This cannot be considered a discussion of the results obtained.

Much of the information should be presented in the Introduction section. Now, the discussion of the own results is often reduced to citing a very general information e.g. the basic information about microorganisms especially in lines 233-245. 

 

Material and Methods

·        Table 1 - explain in which solution the pH was determined? Please
explain the SAR abbreviation. How the content of CaCO₃ were determined? The units need to be completed.

·        The total rates of mineral NPK fertilizers are not clear, please rewrite the information in lines 113-119. Probably the rates were applied in the control treatment, please explain. It is advisable to give the information about the total rates of NPK with applied compost.

·        Table 2 - pH as bellow

·        Table 3 is not clear - there it is necessary to mark important differences with letters.

Were there any statistically significant differences between the years? If no significant interactions between the analysed parameters and the years of the experiment were found, it would be a good idea to provide the average values for the years in the tables. This is a general note for all tables. If yes, this should be explained in the section on statistical analyses.

Results and Discussion

Generally, as mentioned above, this part should be divided into two sections. It is easy to see that application of PGPM together with compost is almost always the most beneficial regardless of the dose of mineral fertilizers used. It may be worth emphasizing the results in the discussion and explain this.

·        Lines 221-230 - it seems reasonable that the selection of microorganisms should be justified in the research methodology and their general effect on plants and soil should be presented in the Introduction. Even if the authors write about improving the nutritional status of plants, this issue concerns the subsection below.

·        Line 209-2011 consider the citation - concerns the use of hydrogel and irrigation

·        Figure 1 – unclear because of the legend - it is difficult to distinguish individual objects. It would be much better to make separate graphs for the each year and mark the treatments on the X-axis. The bars illustrate standard deviation, marking significant differences with letters would make the interpretation of the data much easier.

·        Lines 303-305 – what is the role of Ca²⁺ in this process? It should be explained what are the

·        mean reason of fruit drop.

·        Figure 2  - as Figure 1.

·        In the table 6 the “tree productivity” parameter has been distinguish – please explain this in Material and Methods section. Furthermore, this parameter is described in the next part i.e. 3.4. Yield.  This needs to be sorted out.

·        I suggest to use “selected parameters” instead of “some parameters”

·        Figure 3 – as in case of figures 1 and 2

Conclusions

I suggest to mention a significant role of PGPM in trees production in term of own research.

 

With kind regards

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English should be improved.

Author Response

Reviewer 1 report

 

The manuscript concerns the current issue of reducing the use of mineral fertilizers in favor of organic products as well as the use of PGPM. However the issue is interesting, the paper requires significant corrections due to its chaoticity.

A separate Discussion section should be included. Currently, when describing subsequent research results, authors often refer to basic literature data concerning the positive impact of organic fertilizers on selected soil parameters. This cannot be considered a discussion of the results obtained.

We separated the Results from the Discussion and completely rewrote both.

Much of the information should be presented in the Introduction section. Now, the discussion of the own results is often reduced to citing a very general information e.g. the basic information about microorganisms especially in lines 233-245. 

 We expanded on the discussion to explain our own results and used more references to compare with.

 

Material and Methods

• Table 1 - explain in which solution the pH was determined? Please
  explain the SAR abbreviation. How the content of CaCO₃were determined? The units need to be completed.

These details were added.

• The total rates of mineral NPK fertilizers are not clear, please rewrite the information in lines 113-119. Probably the rates were applied in the control treatment, please explain. It is advisable to give the information about the total rates of NPK with applied compost.

We added the total amount of N in Table 2.

• Table 2 - pH as bellow
• Table 3 is not clear - there it is necessary to mark important differences with letters.

We added mean separation letters using Duncan test and removed LSD values.

Were there any statistically significant differences between the years? If no significant interactions between the analysed parameters and the years of the experiment were found, it would be a good idea to provide the average values for the years in the tables. This is a general note for all tables. If yes, this should be explained in the section on statistical analyses.

The year was not considered a factor in this study, given the consistent climate from year 1 to 2 and the irrigated nature of the orchard. Publishing the data from each year for field experiments is a requirement by promotion committees in Egypt.

Below is a table showing weather data from the years of the study, confirming the consistent weather patterns in this area.

Source: https://www.worldweatheronline.com/tanta-weather-averages/al-gharbiyah/eg.aspx

Season		Av. Temperature ℃	Humidity  %	Rainfall mm.month-1	wind speed	sun days.month-1	UV index
winter	2022	13.33	18.60	8.60	13.10	85.00	11.00
	2023	15.33	18.20	14.70	12.63	85.00	12.00
spring	2022	24.67	14.70	0.00	14.00	91.00	20.00
	2023	24.33	14.90	1.31	13.70	91.00	19.00
summer	2022	28.33	17.00	0.10	12.50	92.00	21.00
	2023	29.00	16.30	0.00	12.53	92.00	20.00
fall	2022	20.33	18.60	3.56	11.00	88.00	16.00
	2023	21.00	18.20	4.16	11.63	92.00	16.00

 

Results and Discussion

Generally, as mentioned above, this part should be divided into two sections. It is easy to see that application of PGPM together with compost is almost always the most beneficial regardless of the dose of mineral fertilizers used. It may be worth emphasizing the results in the discussion and explain this.

Done. We separated the results and Discussion, with emphasizing those results in the Discussion.

• Lines 221-230 - it seems reasonable that the selection of microorganisms should be justified in the research methodology and their general effect on plants and soil should be presented in the Introduction. Even if the authors write about improving the nutritional status of plants, this issue concerns the subsection below.

We added a sentence in the Materials and Methods to justify the use of microorganisms.

• Line 209-2011 consider the citation - concerns the use of hydrogel and irrigation

Removed this reference to hydrogel

• Figure 1 – unclear because of the legend - it is difficult to distinguish individual objects. It would be much better to make separate graphs for the each year and mark the treatments on the X-axis. The bars illustrate standard deviation, marking significant differences with letters would make the interpretation of the data much easier.

Done. Separated years and added letters to the figures.

• Lines 303-305 – what is the role of Ca²⁺in this process? It should be explained what are the mean reason of fruit drop.

Added explanation for fruit drop

• Figure 2  - as Figure 1.

Done

• In the table 6 the “tree productivity” parameter has been distinguish – please explain this in Material and Methods section. Furthermore, this parameter is described in the next part i.e. 3.4. Yield.  This needs to be sorted out.

We clarified the terms used

• I suggest to use “selected parameters” instead of “some parameters”

Good suggestion, thanks.

• Figure 3 – as in case of figures 1 and 2

Done

Conclusions

I suggest to mention a significant role of PGPM in trees production in term of own research.

We added a sentence on these.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript “Influence of Compost and Biological Fertilization with Reducing the Rates of Mineral Fertilizers on Vegetative Growth, Nutritional Status, Yield and Fruit Quality of ‘Anna’ Apples” proposes a comparison between different treatments to reduce the application of mineral fertilizers in favor of different solutions to improve environmental sustainability and increase apple yields.

The experiment appears well designed, but the statistical analysis must be completely modified, considering a general linear model if the distribution is normal or a generalized linear node with two factors: the first factor is the treatment with 13 levels and the second is the year with 2 levels (2022,2023). In this way, it is possible to understand the influence of the year and the treatment. If the year factor were significant, the experiment would require a third year of experimentation.

Furthermore, all standard deviations and significances are missing from the tables.

Without these changes it is not possible to evaluate the quality of the results presented in the manuscript.

 Finally, it is suggested to expand the discussion of the results, lacking in some parts, absent in others.

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript “Influence of Compost and Biological Fertilization with Reducing the Rates of Mineral Fertilizers on Vegetative Growth, Nutritional Status, Yield and Fruit Quality of ‘Anna’ Apples” proposes a comparison between different treatments to reduce the application of mineral fertilizers in favor of different solutions to improve environmental sustainability and increase apple yields.

The experiment appears well designed, but the statistical analysis must be completely modified, considering a general linear model if the distribution is normal or a generalized linear node with two factors: the first factor is the treatment with 13 levels and the second is the year with 2 levels (2022,2023). In this way, it is possible to understand the influence of the year and the treatment. If the year factor were significant, the experiment would require a third year of experimentation.

We did not test the year effect since the climate is consistent in this area, and the trees are grown under irrigation with very little rain

Furthermore, all standard deviations and significances are missing from the tables.

We added standard deviation and mean separation letters

Without these changes it is not possible to evaluate the quality of the results presented in the manuscript.

 Finally, it is suggested to expand the discussion of the results, lacking in some parts, absent in others.

We separated the Results and Discussion into two sections. We completely rewrote each of the sections and expanded the Discussion part.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Line 33: I propose to use "reduce" instead of "cut"

Table 2. Treatments and NPK inputs

Table 5: Please uniform the description of tables , in this case "Effect of mineral,organic and bio-fertilization" as in the others.

With kind regards

AR

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English could be improved

Author Response

We fixed the first two comments. The third comment was not clear, since the suggested title for Table 5 is the same as the current title.

Thank you for your time and constructive feedback,

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors improved the manuscript following some suggested information.

However, regarding the environmental factor, it is not clear what is meant by "the climate is consistent in this area, and the trees are grown under irrigation with very little rain". The authors should include this information in the text, clearly explaining the influence of rain.

Tables 4-9: The authors did not include the standard deviations as requested in Tables 4-9.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I do not consider myself qualified enough to assess the quality of English language

Author Response

We have included a table showing the long-term temperature and rainfall averages for the area. Rainfall is only 45 mm and the orchard is irrigated, minimizing the effect of rainfall on the trees. For the standard deviation values, we felt it would be redundant to add that with the mean separation letters, especially that most of the tables are already busy.

Thank you for all the great comments.

On behalf if the authors,

Ashraf Tubeileh