Mitigated Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Cropping Systems by Organic Fertilizer and Tillage Management

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a very important topic for the influence of the type of fertilization and soil cultivation on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from arable soil. The manuscript is well written and the overall layout of the work is correct and legible. The introduction provides sufficient background and supports the research topic of the study. The description of the research methodology used is accurate, however requires some additions. Discussion is well written and conclusions presented are based on the research conducted.

1. In introduction “ Is tillage done to increase crop yield and mitigate GHG emission: To get this point ”. This is not clear hypothesis.

2. Experimental design is a randomized block design? You need to describe in details the experimental design and how you made the statistical evaluations. This should be written more clearly.

3. How was incorporated chemical and microbial organic fertilizer after wheat harvest because maize (corn) was sowing without soil tillage (no-till)?

4. It must be submitted biological composition of microbial organic fertilizer and of microbial decomposition agent.

5. Soil measurements Authors stated “At each location, soil temperature was measured at the 0–20 cm and 20–40 cm soil depths and recorded every 1 h using automatic data-logging equipment” Why were these data not used in the analyzes - only selected results of these studies are presented in Figure 1?

6. Please indicate in the section materials and methods how the air temperature was measured.

7. Figure 2 – I can't see statistical analysis of the data

8. Table 2 – in table explanation please provide expression for exponential function (similar to polynomial and linear function).

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Article: Mitigated greenhouse gas emissions in cropping systems by organic fertilizer and tillage management, is the correct development of a field experiment. The obtained results and the presented conclusions can be implemented in many crops with a similar climate. It would be interesting to present the results of many years of field experience. A broader analysis would certainly reduce the inference error and allow for a better fit of the model describing the presented relationships. The work is perfectly correct in terms of methodology, data analysis, presentation of results and conclusions.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript “Mitigated greenhouse gas emissions in cropping system by organic fertilizer and tillage management” presents a study on the effects of tillage (rotary tillage vs. deep plowing) and fertilization (commercial fertilizer vs two microbial agents) on soil greenhouse gas emissions in wheat-corn cropping system in North China Plain. The experiment design and methods are appropriate. The data and the discussion support authors’ conclusion. I have some major comments on the manuscript including:

1.     Statistical method. It is stated that one-way ANOVA was conducted for the analysis. But two-way repeated-measures ANOVA should be the appropriate method. The two factors include treatments (TF, TE, DTE, TJ, DTJ) and time.

2.     For figure 6, I would suggest converting cumulative N2O and CH4 emissions to CO2 equivalent values using their GWP.

Minor comments:

The authors should proofread the manuscript to improve the language. E.g.

Line 33: 20% of what

Line 34: destroy to undermine

Line 40: Therefore there is…

These are some examples above, but not limited to these.

Other comments

Line 400: increased microbial activity would increase soil respiration and more CO2 emitted to the atmosphere.

Line 408: mitigate or promote the soil aeration? I think the aeration should be promoted by the deep tillage.

Line 428: you can not simply say that N2O flux is positively correlated to soil water content. It actually follows a Gaussian function. Please see (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969715302321; https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2000)050[0667:TACMOS]2.0.CO;2)

Line 434. It should be optimal water-filled pore space, not soil moisture.

Line 443. Delete “ because it is a source of CH4”.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf