The Effect of Foliar Micronutrient Fertilization on Yield and Nutritional Quality of Maize Grain

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

There is no clear question that is being addressed in the study hence general information that is already known is being presented. It has to be clear whether the soils under which the variety was grown were deficient in the micronutrients in question for you to attribute the results to the foliar applications that were done. It is also not clear how the application rates for foliar sprays were determined. In the conclusions it is mentioned that 2024 growing season was better compared to 2023 and yet you went on to compare the results from the two seasons.   

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Brief summary.

The manuscript presents results on the effect of foliar fertilization of maize with commercial micronutrients. Makes a superficial introduction on the effects of foliar application on corn. Material and methods are adequate. The experimental design is proposed as one-factor experiment performed in four replicates in a randomized block design for the application of fertilizers. The data obtained in the two crop cycles carried out are analysed independently. Wouldn't it be a two-factor design Year and Micronutrient? And in that case, shouldn't the interactions between these sources of variation be analysed?

General concept comments.

Neither the introduction nor the material and methods specify how these micronutrients are presented in the fertilizer composition. It should be specified whether they are chelated (and with which chelate) or are mineral salts.

Figures must represent the variables of both axes (x and y) with their units). The variability of the observations (with error bars) should be presented. The title of the graph must describe the content of the graph.

The data presented in Fig. 2 and 3 could be included in Tables 2 and 3 respectively to simplify the reading of the manuscript

Tables should avoid including letters for variables in which no differences in variance are detected. Table 7 must be presented in accordance with the journal's rules in a format like the previous 6. https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy/instructions

The conclusions should not be a repetition (or summary) of the results but should respond to the set objective and confirm (or not) the initial hypothesis. Avoid repeating the results presented between lines 346 and 352.

Specific comments 

see the attached file

Line 135. A reference is needed to refer to 14 values on the BBCH scale for corn

Line 144. Avoid confusion between the ear and the ear of corn. You can specify it as “ear of corn” or use the synonym corncob.

Line 276. The expression "soil and foliar methods" does not seem appropriate to refer to the application of fertilizers.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors present a manuscript on a biofortification experiment in maize using seven micronutrients without combinations.  While I acknowledge the effort behind this work, the study is based on a relatively simple experimental design that shows no real novelty. However, it could be of interest to the scientific community, but the data analysis and presentation are rather careless, which substantially diminishes the impact of the results. Furthermore, the manuscript is at times disorganized and not well-formatted, and the English language requires significant revision. A thorough review and editing of both the scientific content and the language is necessary before the manuscript can be considered for publication.

I leave some specific comments below that I hope that the authors find useful:

 

Line 117 The methodology for soil analysis should be described in more detail. At minimum, the authors should include references, or a brief description of the procedures used, to enable readers to contextualize and compare the reported results.

 

Line 123 The climograph should also include average minimum and maximum temperatures, to more accurately describe the environmental conditions during the experiment.

 

Line 173 If the authors employed a modified version of Lichtenthaler’s (1987) equations, they might consider including chlorophyll quantification in future studies. This would allow for a more comprehensive physiological characterization of the plants, especially considering the variability associated with SPAD measurements.

 

Line 204 The authors should indicate whether they verified the assumptions required for parametric analysis (e.g., normality, homogeneity of variances). These checks are essential to justify the use of ANOVA.

 

Line 208 A summary of the ANOVA results should be presented, including degrees of freedom, F-values, and p-values for each analysis. This information is necessary to assess the statistical robustness of the findings.

 

Line 216. able and figure captions must be self-explanatory. Currently, none of them provide sufficient detail to be interpreted independently. This lack of clarity severely undermines the communication of the results. In particular, the y-axes of the figures lack variable names and units, making it difficult to understand what is being shown. More importantly, mean values should be presented together with their standard errors to allow readers to evaluate the reliability and variability of the data.

 

Line 220 n Figure 2, it appears that two separate analyses (presumably one for each year) have been combined in a single panel, but this is not explained in the caption or text. For clarity, if two separate ANOVAs were conducted for each year, the post hoc significance lettering should also be differentiated (e.g., lowercase letters for 2023 and uppercase letters for 2024) to prevent confusion. As an example, Boron × 2023 has a mean value of 43.3 and is marked as “a”, while Control × 2024 has a mean of 44.2 and is marked as “b”, suggesting that separate analyses were performed. In this context, the statement “In 2024, the number of grains per ear was significantly higher than in 2023” is misleading, since the interaction term (Treatment × Year) does not appear to have been tested. The authors should either include this interaction in the analysis or revise the discussion accordingly. Omitting the interaction significantly limits the interpretive value and generalizability of the findings.

 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript would benefit from thorough revision prior to publication

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Refer to comments in the attachment

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I would like to thank the authors for their effort in revising and improving the original manuscript. However, I still have some major issues with data treatment. While the manuscript has improved compared to the original version, the simplicity of the experimental design still demands a much more rigorous statistical analysis and cleaner data presentation than what is currently provided.

 

Line 216 The section on statistical analysis remains unchanged. This is a missed opportunity to strengthen the manuscript. A more detailed description of the statistical approach is essential to understand the scope and reliability of the experimental findings.

 

Line 221 The manuscript still lacks full ANOVA outputs for the figures (for these, the ANOVa is non-existent) and tables. While statistical significance is indicated via asterisks (*, **, ***), the authors should also provide the corresponding F-values, degrees of freedom, and exact p-values. Moreover, it is critical that the authors explicitly state whether they verified the assumptions required for parametric testing, such as normality and homoscedasticity. These checks are particularly important given the observed patterns of significance across multiple parameters. In this context, reporting the assumptions and their verification is essential to understand why the now-included interaction term (Year × Foliar fertilization) consistently yielded non-significant results. Without this information, it is difficult to assess whether the lack of significance reflects a true absence of interaction or potential issues with statistical power or model specification. The figures (e.g., Figures 2 and 3) use uppercase and lowercase letters to indicate statistical differences by year and treatment, which is an improvement. However, it remains ambiguous whether the same statistical model was applied across years or separately, as p-values for interactions are not shown consistently.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English has improved, but there are still numerous grammatical issues

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf