Assessment of the Persistence of Avena sterilis L. Patches in Wheat Fields for Site-Specific Sustainable Management

Round  1

Reviewer 1 Report

    This paper has the similarity rate of 15% thus it is deserved for its originality. In general, this paper is prepared in a good form, but there are some minor points should be improved:

    Provide more information with references about environmental pollution from herbicide usage and weed management. They may refer from some references such as (Weed allelochemicals and possibility for weed management; 10.18052/www.scipress.com/ILNS.56.25) or (Fan et al., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2017.11.025). 

    In general, English is good, but please check for expression in some places was so long and redundancy.

    Writing in some Tables was not clear. For instance, why in Table 3, Wild Oat is written in capital letter, please check through out the paper.

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review on agronomy-416619 ‘Assessment of the Persistence of Avena sterilis L. Patches in Wheat Fields for Site-Specific Sustainable Management’

    This manuscript evaluates the spatial persistence of wild oat (Avena sterilis L.) patches in four wheat fields in Spain, by using aerial images (QuickBird satellite imagery) of 2006 and 2008. The primary goal of this paper was to determine the feasibility of using late season weed map images to better inform the weed management decision for following year. The authors found an overall increasing trend in weed patch area in 2008 on the places where wild oat was present in the previous year (2006). Among various simulations of agronomic scenarios, the authors found some scenarios profitable while others not. Also, as expected, field to field variation in weed infestation and changes (increase or decrease) in subsequent year was noticed. I think the method used by authors is a unique approach in precision agriculture towards a proper adaptive weed management. However, the power of their work could have been stronger if they had more fields, than just four, provided that, there was a huge variability among fields. Including only four fields and two years of data in their study significantly limited the inference space and that this could possibly make a little difficult to judge how robust the observed pattern is. Perhaps the authors could address this in the methods or in the discussion, including some logistical constraints. The manuscript is clearly written and well-justified, but their language in several places could have been simpler or more straightforward. I suggest using direct tense and more precise language (see below for details) in their writing. For example, there is no need of explaining something like “Table 1 shows that…” or “Figure 2 shows that….” for every table or figure. Overall, the results of this study are interesting and useful. Detailed comments are below.

Detailed comments. 

Introduction:

L35, what is “that” referring here? Try to avoid too much demonstratives in your sentences. As antecedents are not always clear, it’s more proactive to spell out the mechanisms.

L40 (also see, L60 and more), again, what does “this” mean? Check those demonstratives throughout the text.

L75, do you need the first part of your sentence (i.e., “As per the above introduction”)?

L79, instead of “influence”, how about inform or help?

L80-82, you should write your objective more clearly. Also, rewrite this last sentence to make it clear.

Methods: 

L140, X hat is little off. Also, in w_ij , ij looks subscript in your formula. Be consistent.

L148, provided that the fields were relatively small, ground truthing could have been easily done to cross check.

L172, who is 12? You should give last name of author, at least....

L173, who is 24? Your sentences should always be complete, without considering the texts inside parenthesis.

L177, which reason?

L184, you mean following Barroso et al.? But, this time you did it right by saying …”Barroso et al. [26]”….This is what I meant before!

L188, emergence?

L213, citations for the equation?

Results:

L241-244, combine in one sentence. You don't need to say "...is displayed in this figure.....this figure shows.......". Give your figure in parenthesis and avoid unnecessary texts. Also, check L255,256, 284, 391, and so on.

L256-257, sentence is not clear.

L263, is “evolution” a proper word? Try reconsidering.

L297-298, the first part of this sentence is unnecessary.

L299 and elsewhere, write direct/active voice…such as ….” We observed..........instead of …. “can be observed “or so on.

L317-319, but it sounds like these sentences belong to the methods section.

L324, say “we used those results to design”, instead of “Those results were used to design..............Again, pay attention to the demonstrative (e.g., “those”) in this sentence.

L350, Delete “analysis of”….Check other captions too

L378, you don’t need the first part of your sentence. Delete.

Discussion:

L427-428, your sentence is confusing, and little contradictory

L428-432, also did all fields belong to the same grower or different growers? Management tactic could vary significantly among growers (you can refer to Pollnac et al. 2008 and Adhikari and Menalled 2018, given below):

Pollnac, F.W., Rew, L.J., Maxwell, B.D., Menalled, F.D., 2008. Spatial patterns, species richness and cover in weed communities of organic and conventional no-tillage spring wheat systems. Weed Res. 48: 398–407

Adhikari, S., Menalled, F.D., 2018. Impacts of dryland farm management systems on weeds and ground beetles (Carabidae) in the Northern Great Plains. Sustainability 10, 2146

Also, here are more papers that could be relevant to your study:

Lamb, D.W., 1998. Opportunity for satellite and airborne remote sensing of weeds in Australian crops. In: Medd R.W., Pratley J.E. (Eds.), Precision Weed Management in Crops and Pasture. Proceedings of a workshop, 5–6 May, (CRC for Weed Management Systems, Adelaid), p. 154.

Rew LJ & Cousens RD (2001) Spatial distribution of weeds in arable crops: a current sampling and analytical methods appropriate. Weed Research 41, 1–18.

Jasieniuk M, Maxwell BD, Anderson RL, Evans JO, Lyon DJ, Miller SD, Morishita DW, Ogg AG, Seefeldt S, Stahlman PT, Northam FE, Westra P, Kebede Z, Wicks GA (1999) Site-to-site and year-to-year variation in Triticum aestivum–Aegilops cylindrica interference relationships. Weed Sci 47:529–537

L451-452, L471 and elsewhere, referring to tables/figures in discussion section is not quite common.

L454, Deleted the extra dot.

L503, should say “previous studies??, instead of giving just the numbers!

References:

L536, check formatting consistencies in References section.

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round  2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors carefully considered all of my previous comments and suggestions.