Effects of Timing in Irrigation and Fertilization on Soil NO3−-N Distribution, Grain Yield and Water–Nitrogen Use Efficiency of Drip-Fertigated Winter Wheat in the North China Plain
, Zhuanyun Si 1, Sunusi Amin Abubakar 1,2, Yueping Liang 1, Kun Liu 3,* and Yang Gao 1,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
Most of the comments have been taken into account. Grammar and language have been improved. Discussion section has also improved, deleting repeated parts and comparing authors work with results reported by others. Only some suggestions can be seen below:
Line 33: Please add comma between ‘China’ and ‘making’ for a better understanding
46; Please add comma before ‘thereby’.
226-227: ‘No matter…’ These sentence is too colloquial. Please replace it by regardless or something similar.
251: it’s. This is too colloquial, replace it by ‘it is’.
262: letter seems smaller. revise it.
278-279: ‘could to be’? correct this sentence.
300: Please, replace ‘because’ by ‘due to’
Table 4: The table seems to be not placed correctly. Please revise it.
Author Response
Response letter to Editor and reviewers
Dear Editors and Reviewers,
We are writing to you concerning our manuscript “Effects of the timing of irrigation and fertilization on soil NO3−-N distribution, grain yield, and water-nitrogen use efficiency of drip-fertigated winter wheat in the North China Plain" (water-1713087 (1)). Authors, according to the reviewer’s comments have revised the manuscript. The redundancy is reduced as much as possible based on the plagiarism report attached by the editor and the English language is polished by the MDPI English editing service. All comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving the quality of our paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the comments are as flowing:
Please find below our responses all the reviewers.
Reviewer 1
Most of the comments have been taken into account. Grammar and language have been improved. Discussion section has also improved, deleting repeated parts and comparing authors work with results reported by others. Only some suggestions can be seen below:
Response:
Thank you for your appreciation. Please find below our responses to your suggestion.
Line 33: Please add comma between ‘China’ and ‘making’ for a better understanding
Response:
A comma is added between ‘China’ and ‘making’ as recommended. Line 33
46; Please add comma before ‘thereby’.
Response:
A comma is added before ‘thereby’ as recommended. Line 46
226-227: ‘No matter…’ These sentence is too colloquial. Please replace it by regardless or something similar.
Response:
Thank you for you observation. Authors revised the sentence in order to make them more scientifically sound. Lines 223-225
251: it’s. This is too colloquial, replace it by ‘it is’.
Response:
it’s has been replaced by ‘it is’ as suggested. Line 248
262: letter seems smaller. revise it.
Response:
Format is crosschecked and revised throughout the manuscript according to the journal’s template.
278-279: ‘could to be’? correct this sentence.
Response:
The statement ‘could to be’ is changed to ‘could be’. Line 275
300: Please, replace ‘because’ by ‘due to’
Response:
The term ‘because’ is replaced and the whole sentence is improved suggested. Line 297-299
Table 4: The table seems to be not placed correctly. Please revise it.
Response:
Table 4 as well as other tables were placed according to the journal’s template
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript submitted to the MDPI Journal Water titled “Effects of the timing of irrigation and fertilization on soil NO3N distribution, grain yield, and water-nitrogen use efficiency of drip-fertigated winter wheat in the North China Plain” though a more specific region-based case study is acceptable for publication in the Water journal with minor spell check and grammatical corrections.
Author Response
Response letter to Editor and reviewers
Dear Editors and Reviewers,
We are writing to you concerning our manuscript “Effects of the timing of irrigation and fertilization on soil NO3−-N distribution, grain yield, and water-nitrogen use efficiency of drip-fertigated winter wheat in the North China Plain" (water-1713087 (1)). Authors, according to the reviewer’s comments have revised the manuscript. The redundancy is reduced as much as possible based on the plagiarism report attached by the editor and the English language is polished by the MDPI English editing service. All comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving the quality of our paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the comments are as flowing:
Please find below our responses all the reviewers.
Reviewer 2
The manuscript submitted to the MDPI Journal Water titled “Effects of the timing of irrigation and fertilization on soil NO3N distribution, grain yield, and water-nitrogen use efficiency of drip-fertigated winter wheat in the North China Plain” though a more specific region-based case study is acceptable for publication in the Water journal with minor spell check and grammatical corrections.
Response:
We are thankful to you for your time and efforts made in deep and through reviewing of this manuscript. We have addressed all minor spelling and grammatical mistakes throughout the manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors did not improve English language in various points marked previously.
Author Response
Response letter to Editor and reviewers
Dear Editors and Reviewers,
We are writing to you concerning our manuscript “Effects of the timing of irrigation and fertilization on soil NO3−-N distribution, grain yield, and water-nitrogen use efficiency of drip-fertigated winter wheat in the North China Plain" (water-1713087 (1)). Authors, according to the reviewer’s comments have revised the manuscript. The redundancy is reduced as much as possible based on the plagiarism report attached by the editor and the English language is polished by the MDPI English editing service. All comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving the quality of our paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the comments are as flowing:
Please find below our responses all the reviewers.
Reviewer 3
The authors did not improve English language in various points marked previously.
Response:
Authors have carefully recheck the whole manuscript to improve the scientific writing and the English language is polished by the MDPI English editing service. We believe that the English editing has improved the language level of the manuscript to a level of satisfaction for meeting the journal publication requirement.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The interest of this work lies in the importance of obtaining the adequate dose of water and nitrogen so that the crop has a good yield, but avoiding nitrogen losses to the subsoil, a growing problem worldwide.
The work is well planned, with a reasoned approach (introduction and material and methods section). However, some grammatical mistakes and the lack of scientific language in some parts of the manuscript have been found. Thus, the manuscript should be thoroughly revised by a native English speaker.
On the other hand, the discussion needs to be improved. Authors should remove parts where discussion is too obvious (lines 274-276) and results are described again. Example: First paragraph of section 4.2, lines 276-280: Authors should remove results already described in results section, or at least reduce results to one sentence. Paragraph from line 284 has better content, since these results are described quickly and compared with other studies, which is the main objective of the discussion section.
My suggestion is to carry out a greater search to find similar works in which the application of nitrogen has been studied at several times during irrigation, (in this or in other crops, cereals if possible) and compare those works with the authors' results.
Other suggestions:
Line 54: This sentence is repeated.
Line 62: Not understood.
Line 65: Change ‘critical’ by ‘essential’.
Section 2.3.1: ‘Soil samples were taken after irrigation and fertilization’: Does it means that samples were collected after each irrigation and fertilization episode?? Or only in one moment of the entire crop cycle? According to table 2, it seems that data from only one irrigation and fertilization episode is shown.
Line 117: The portion of soil collected was from 0 cm to 60 cm, not at 60 cm only, according to table 2.
Section 2.3.2. ‘plant height and leaf area was physically measured every 7-10 days’. But according to figure 4, there is no evolution of these parameters throughout the experiment, since only one measurement is shown.
It would have been interesting to monitor both the growth of the plant and its nitrogen content in the different phonological stages, as well as the dynamics of nitrogen in the soil.
Section 2.3.4: The paragraph is repeated.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript submitted to the MDPI Journal Water titled “Effects of the timing of irrigation and fertilization on soil NO3N distribution, grain yield, and water-nitrogen use efficiency of drip-fertigated winter wheat in the North China Plain” seems a case study that lacks innovation and scientific contribution. My suggestion is to reject the article based on the poor presentation, sound technical research design, and scientific writing.
General comments:
- The writing part is very poor. Authors should proofread the entire manuscript before submissions, a native English speaker works alright.
- The research work presented in the manuscript seems outdated considering the recent advances in the fields of fertigation and irrigation. This research work is well suited to maintain a record of the effects of water and nitrogen for a specific region under specific agro-ecological conditions rather publishing as a scientific contribution
- Manuscript presentation needs special attention. Revisit the figure's font to make them clear and readable. All figures must be standalone for reader understanding
- Recheck the entire bibliographic list to refer to recent 5 year published articles
- Mathematical expressions need an explanation of all the parameters
Reviewer 3 Report
Minor improvements in English language are highlighted in the manuscript.
How many lysimeters were finally used? One per treatment?
You write some phrases twice and I have highlighted them.
L286-287 30 mm is a dose compared to one other dose. How do you say it is ideal? It could be that 40 mm was better. Be a bit more straight to what you studied and not larger general comments.
References 14 and 47 are the same.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
