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Article
Peer-Review Record

Humic Acids Properties of Luvisol of 40-Year Fertilizer Experiment

Agronomy 2025, 15(6), 1405; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy15061405
by Bożena Dębska *,† and Magdalena Banach-Szott †
Reviewer 1: Anonymous
Agronomy 2025, 15(6), 1405; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy15061405
Submission received: 9 May 2025 / Revised: 28 May 2025 / Accepted: 5 June 2025 / Published: 6 June 2025

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for submitting this work. Please see few comments below:

  • 2.1. Experiment design L.88: Please provide more information on why this design? how sample collection was designed? how many were collected? was it in clusters? how many meters/km was the cluster? 
  • Figure 1. Selected RP-HPLC chromatogram of humic acids. what do you mean by Selected in the title of the figure? 
  • Discussion and conclusion need to be improved. There is no strong message there and no connection to long term soil health and fertility was made. 
  • Missing the real message of this work and how others can be beneficial of it? what this work can contribute to in terms of soil fertility and soil health? 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

The paper's Authors wish to thank for all the precious comments and guidelines.

I hope that the corrections introduced are satisfactory. All the changes have been marked in the text.

With best regards,

Bożena Dębska

 

All data regarding the experimental design have been completed in the “Experiment design” section. The scientific purpose and significance of the research were expanded in the manuscript.

Figure 1. Selected RP-HPLC chromatogram of humic acids mean that this is some kind of sample and illustrative chromatogram. However, the title of the figure has been changed to present a specific example

Discussion and conclusions have been revised. It is common knowledge that only proper management of external organic matter can contribute to increased carbon sequestration (carbon farming), preservation of biodiversity and obtaining high-quality crops, which will consequently translate into safe food.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript lacks scientific rationale, sound methodology, and presentation and interpretation of the data.

The introduction section doesn't tell anything about the motivation for this study. Why did the authors try to do the study? What is the significance of the study? How does this study help advance the science?

The method section is okay, but can be improved with how you interpret the outputs from the instruments.

The presentation of the data needs significant improvement. Most tables lack information about interpreting the numbers. What do the upper- and lowercase letters mean? Most figures are missing Y-axis values. What do these numbers mean?

The overall motivation and interpretation of the data are missing. The manuscript needs significant improvement before considering for publication.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

The paper's Authors wish to thank for all the precious comments and guidelines.

I hope that the corrections introduced are satisfactory. All the changes have been marked in the text.

With best regards,

Bożena Dębska

The manuscript has expanded the scientific purpose and significance of the study. The methodology section has also been supplemented with a missing method of interpreting the results.

The tables show the results statistically developed as described in section 2.3. Statistical Analyses. In addition, detailed explanations are given below Table 1.

Figure 2: This is an indicative figure where 2 spectra on a scale from 0 to 100% transmittance were plotted on 1 graph with a shift. Therefore, numerical values ​​were not plotted.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have no further comments

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