Assessment of Fertilizer Management Strategies Aiming to Increase Nitrogen Use Efficiency of Wheat Grown Under Conservation Agriculture
, Fidel Núñez-Ramírez 1, Cristina Ruíz-Alvarado 1, María Elena Cárdenas-Castañeda 2 and Iván Ortiz-Monasterio 2,*
Sanchita Mandal
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Line 21: ….among yields? Use “wheat yields”
Line 24: change from “highly significantly” to “significantly” and “them” to “wheat yields and agronomic efficiency of N”
Line 26: Please paraphrase the 1st section of this sentence
Line 30: Too many keywords. Use six keywords but not more than that. For example, you don’t need to use “timing of fertilizer application; methods of fertilizer application; Mexico” for the keywords. Please make it simple.
Line 48-49: Please clarify this statement “For testing the NUE of agronomical practices other NUE and NUE components have been proposed”. Other NUE and NUE components?
Line 51: Please check AEN and AEN and be consistent with the abbreviation.
Line 54: Please add those crop management practices
The literature gap is missing from the introduction. The relationship between NUE and the fertilizer management practices for wheat plants are going to be addressed in this study. Therefore, a clear literature/research gap need to be identified before the aims and objectives section. I would highly recommend the authors to add one/two sentences to clarify the requirement of the current research.
Please check the line spacing in section 2.1. Looks different from the introduction. Please use the same spacing throughout the draft.
Line 92: Just wondering if any weedicides or pesticides applied during the experimentation. If so, then please add those details here because the addition of weedicides or pesticides could alter soil pH and affect the plant available nutrients especially nitrogen. If organic systems were applied, then please mention the details.
Line 111-112: Any reason for using micro- Kjeldahl method to calculate N content compared to CNS analyser?
Line 139-141: If there is any reference for the adverse effect of wheat leaf rust (Puccinia triticina) then please add that reference here.
Line 174: Nitrogen agronomic efficiency or agronomic nitrogen efficiency?
Line 177: Why AE? Is AE different from AEN?
Line 264: Classic and modern literature reports? Could you please clarify this?
The discussion on AEN and associated wheat yield are quite long. The individual references with statements are too much. I would recommend reducing the number of references in the discussion section.
Line 200: What is the initial pH of the soil?
Line 305-309: Please paraphrase this sentence. ……….at least around 80 kg ha-1 of mineral N was put available for wheat….?
Line 322: Still was not markedly?? What is this?
Line 329: Again “classic and modern report”. What do you mean by “classic”?
Line 336: Please use a different word for “sacrifice”
Line 344: In the present study, in general? Please paraphrase
Line 345: Please change the figure 2 position. It supposed to be presented before the conclusion section.
Line 350-354: This exception could be attributed to the microbial immobilization. However, further study can be aimed to explore this section.
Line 356: Change “sound” to “effective”
Line 358: High yield of what? Please make it clear.
The future approaches from the current study results need to be identified at the end of the conclusion. Currently, there is no such information. Therefore, I would recommend adding a couple of sentences to mention some future research strategies from the findings.
Author Response
Following, please find responses to your every one of your pertinent observations. Thank you for helping improve our manuscript.
Line 21: ….among yields? Use “wheat yields” -Corrected
Line 24: change from “highly significantly” to “significantly” and “them” to “wheat yields and agronomic efficiency of N”--Corrected
Line 26: Please paraphrase the 1st section of this sentence- Sentence rewritten
Line 30: Too many keywords. Use six keywords but not more than that. For example, you don’t need to use “timing of fertilizer application; methods of fertilizer application; Mexico” for the keywords. Please make it simple.- -Only 6 key words were used.
Line 48-49: Please clarify this statement “For testing the NUE of agronomical practices other NUE and NUE components have been proposed”. Other NUE and NUE components?- -Sentence rewritten
Line 51: Please check AEN and AEN and be consistent with the abbreviation.- Corrected
Line 54: Please add those crop management practices- -Management practices added
The literature gap is missing from the introduction. The relationship between NUE and the fertilizer management practices for wheat plants are going to be addressed in this study. Therefore, a clear literature/research gap need to be identified before the aims and objectives section. I would highly recommend the authors to add one/two sentences to clarify the requirement of the current research.- -Two sentences were added to correct this literature gap.
Please check the line spacing in section 2.1. Looks different from the introduction. Please use the same spacing throughout the draft.-Corrected
Line 92: Just wondering if any weedicides or pesticides applied during the experimentation. If so, then please add those details here because the addition of weedicides or pesticides could alter soil pH and affect the plant available nutrients especially nitrogen. If organic systems were applied, then please mention the details. A Table (Table 1) was added to address this particular point in materials and methods.
Line 111-112: Any reason for using micro- Kjeldahl method to calculate N content compared to CNS analyser?- Micro- Kjeldahl methodology is the one we have in place at our laboratory.
Line 139-141: If there is any reference for the adverse effect of wheat leaf rust (Puccinia triticina) then please add that reference here.- Reference added.
Line 174: Nitrogen agronomic efficiency or agronomic nitrogen efficiency?- Corrected.
Line 177: Why AE? Is AE different from AEN?- Corrected, should be AEN.
Line 264: Classic and modern literature reports? Could you please clarify this?- Corrected.
The discussion on AEN and associated wheat yield are quite long. The individual references with statements are too much. I would recommend reducing the number of references in the discussion section. -Three or four old references were cut.
Line 200: What is the initial pH of the soil?- Corrected, pH was 8.8.
Line 305-309: Please paraphrase this sentence. ……….at least around 80 kg ha-1 of mineral N was put available for wheat….? --Sentence modified.
Line 322: Still was not markedly?? What is this?-- Corrected.
Line 329: Again “classic and modern report”. What do you mean by “classic”? Corrected.
Line 336: Please use a different word for “sacrifice” Corrected (decrease was used).
Line 344: In the present study, in general? Please paraphrase- Corrected.
Line 345: Please change the figure 2 position. It supposed to be presented before the conclusion section. --Corrected. The Figure 2 was moved before the conclusion.
Line 350-354: This exception could be attributed to the microbial immobilization. However, further study can be aimed to explore this section. - The authors, including myself, were not sure about this possibility (why this only treatment 4 would have microbial immobilization), so left the sentence as it was.
Line 356: Change “sound” to “effective”- Corrected.
Line 358: High yield of what? Please make it clear. Corrected.
The future approaches from the current study results need to be identified at the end of the conclusion. Currently, there is no such information. Therefore, I would recommend adding a couple of sentences to mention some future research strategies from the findings.-We have added a future course of research, derived from our results.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript “Assessment of fertilizer management strategies aiming to increasing nitrogen use efficiency of wheat grown under conservation agriculture” raises a topic of current interest. The work without being novel has valuable information. The results obtained are well discussed and the conclusions presented are adequate. If there is a little questionable issue in the interpretation of the results, this would be the suggested value of the mineralization rate of 80 kg of N as a supplementary source of N for cultivation as it has not been made any determination on it. The authors consider mineralization as the only process responsible for this extra contribution of N, without considering that in the nitrogen balance there may have been a reduction in N losses in the system through gas emissions, despite not finding differences between the urea and urea treatments plus inhibitor of urease activity.
I consider it pertinent to include the pH value of the soil, since the pH of vertisols soils range between 6 and 8 and in a soil with pH 6 the behavior of the urea is quite different from if the pH is 8. A pH of 6 establishes a percentage of ammonium in ammonia form of 0.1%, while a pH of 8 that percentage increases to approximately 6-7%. This difference significantly affects soil ammonia emissions. Also the system of applying irrigation should be mentioned
Author Response
Following, please find responses to your kind observations. Thank you for helping improve our manuscript.
The authors consider mineralization as the only process responsible for this extra contribution of N, without considering that in the nitrogen balance there may have been a reduction in N losses in the system through gas emissions, despite not finding differences between the urea and urea treatments plus inhibitor of urease activity.- The possibility of reduced ammonia volatilization under conservation agriculture is real and have added that to our discussion and have included a couple of references to suppor that possibility. Thank you.
I consider it pertinent to include the pH value of the soil- We have added the pH value, and this was quite alcaline, 8.8.
Also the system of applying irrigation should be mentioned- We are clarifying that we used furrow irrigation.
