Winter Potato Water Footprint Response to Climate Change in Egypt

Specific comments

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Comment 1: Why was data from NASA (line 124) used for the analysis of meteorological data, and not the results of observations recorded by the numerous meteorological stations shown in Fig. 1?

Thanks for your comments. The climate datasets were retrieved from NASA (https://power.larc.nasa.gov/data-access-viewer/) during the period from 1990 to 2016 on a 0.5× 0.5 degrees (Okal et al. 2020; Mompremier et al., 2021). Because the availability of the overserved climate data we used grid datasets to overcome the not availability of the observed data that agreed with Okal et al. 2020; Mompremier et al., 2021. The stations in figure 1 were selected randomly to cover all the governate.

Comment 2: The authors analyze potato evapotranspiration for 26 years (1990-2016). Was the same type of potato grown in the analyzed area used throughout this period?

Thanks for your comments. Right, the potato yield data for winter potato (spunta) that is the common type was planting in the winter season over the study area that were imported from Holland. The data of potato was collected from the Economic Affairs Sector, Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation in Egypt.

comment 3: The authors use inconsistent nomenclature. Others (GWF, BWF) in the figures (fig. 6,7,9) and others in the text of the article.

Thanks for your comments. The figures were modified to be concise with text to be WF blue or WF green.

Comment 4: Why is there so little attention to irrigation in the article (lines 270-271 only). Where did the data on the irrigation of potatoes come from? Has irrigation efficiency, depending on the irrigation systems used, been taken into account?

Thanks for your comments. Based on the calculation of blue footprint, it depends on crop water needs or crop evapotranspiration (irrigation) over crop yield, however, the green water footprint depends on effective precipitation over crop yield that called rainfed agriculture that cover area higher than the irrigated area.

Furthermore, because of the difficulty of collecting irrigation data, we used the crop evapotranspiration not the irrigation amount to calculate the blur water footprint. Also, water footprint calculation doesn’t take the irrigation efficiency into account it mainly depends on crop evapotranspiration.

Comment 5: The beginning of the "Conclusions" section should rather complement the "introduction" section.

Thanks for your suggestion. This point was taken into consideration and delete it from the conclusion part.

Comment 6: Why are the maps shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 6 not the same? There are clear differences in the shape of the north-eastern borders.

Figure 1 has been modified.

Comment 7: What stations are the authors writing about (lines 244-245)?

Within each governorate, data were collected for a number of meteorological stations that are selected randomly to cover the whole area as shown in figure 1. Based on these stations the evapotranspiration was calculated according to these data to calculate the blue and green water footprint.

Comment 8: Moreover, the article requires a few technical corrections of the errors noticed in the text. Belong to them: 1) different text font (lines 58-60) 2) incorrect writing of units (lines: 246, 247, 250)

Thanks for your comment. We have revised all the manuscript and recheck all technical errors.

Specific comments

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Comment 1: References style does not meet MDPI, please use the MDPI style for reference format

Thanks for your comment. By your suggestion, we have rechecked the style to meet the MDPI style.

Comment 2: Climate change impacts worldwide and in Egypt should be introduced in the Introduction and going beyond the limited studies on potato. There are many papers focused on climate change in Egypt as:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.209

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-022-02253-x

Thanks for your comment. By your suggestion, we have the related articles to climate change in line 56:61

comment 3: I am wondering about the number of meteorological stations in Fig.1? could you please provide a prove for that?

Thanks for your comment. The climate datasets were retrieved from NASA (https://power.larc.nasa.gov/data-access-viewer/) during the period from 1990 to 2016 on a 0.5× 0.5 degrees (Okal et al. 2020; Mompremier et al., 2021). Because the availability of the overserved climate data we used grid datasets to overcome the not availability of the observed data that agreed with Okal et al. 2020; Mompremier et al., 2021. The stations in figure 1 were selected randomly to cover all the governate.

Comment 4: Discussion need to be improved

Thanks for your suggestion. The discussion has been improved