Superior Wheat Yield and Profitability in Conservation Agriculture with Diversified Rotations vs. Conventional Tillage in Cold Arid Climates

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article “Wheat productivity and profitability under conservation agriculture and diverse rotations consistently greater than those under conventional tillage in cold arid region”  is fully in the scope of the LAND Journal and of the specific Special Issue.

The topic is of scientific interest and reports a case-study on the implementation of ecosystem-based management practice.

The evaluation of a long-term experiment data, on 2 tillage management and 10 crop rotations, represents a huge experimental and management effort. Similarly, an evaluation from several point of views (biomass and seed yield, soil moisture, soil organic matter and economic indicators) has been appreciated.

 

Some remarks have been found and a MAJOR REVISION is required before to accept the article for publication.

Title: the indication of a result in the title is not frequent in scientific articles, but can be accepted. I’d add a verb (is, results) after “rotations”.

 

Introduction

Pag. 2 Lines 42 and Table 2: the scientific names need to be reported in italics and with the initial of the classifier.

Pag. 2 Lines 52-53: specify if 332 mm are referred to the rainfall of one complete year or to an average wheat growing season.

 

Material and Methods

Pag. 4 Lines 140-146: replace “l” with “L” to indicate the volume unit measurement.

Pag. 4 Lines 157: enclose a web reference, if exists.

Pag. 5 Lines 164: delete the initials of authors.

Pag. 5 Lines 168: replace “system” with “systems”.

Pag. 5 Lines 170: add “P” after “0.05”.

 

Results

Pag. 6  Figure 2: indicate in the legend the considered soil depth.

Pag. 6  Figure 3: it has been repeated twice. Delete one of them.

Pag. 6  Figure 3: the size of text is too small; it is not readable. Increase the font’s size.

Pag. 6  Figure 3: in the legend replace “underCA” with under CA”.

Pag. 6 Lines 211-213: correction tracks are still active.

Pag. 6 Lines 215: replace “ha -1” with “ha^-1”.

Page 7 Figure 4: this kind of box-plot needs to be better described, explain the meaning of coloured area, the horizontal line, the vertical bars, the outliers. It appears, however, very strange that in 2018 and 2021 the average values (horizontal line, I suppose) is close to zero, when other data are much higher. It indicates a very asymmetric data distribution, but in the text no reference to this has been reported. I require a check of these data and an explanation in the text.

Page 7 Figure 5: this figure is completely wrong. The default excel setting on error bars has been used, and so, all the horizontal error bars are the same, and this is not possible. Indicate in the legend if they represent the standard deviations or other statistics.

Page 7 Line 233: replace “wheat-wheat” with “wheat-chickpea”.

Page 8 Line 249: add “, respectively” after “hectare”.

Page 8 Line 257: replace “every fourth year” with “after four years”.

Pag. 8  Figures 6 an 7: the size of text is too small; it is not readable. Increase the font’s size. Uniform the units in the legend (use always $ or USD).

 

Discussion

In this section no reference to soil moisture and soil organic matter data has been reported. Some aspects on water use efficiency and soil quality, should be further analyzed.

 

Pag. 9 Lines 275-276: replace with “highest” and “longest”.

Pag. 10 Line 341: this sentence is a personal estimation or it is a scientific result? Explain better and, in the second case, it needs of a reference.

Author Response

Reviewer 1.1: The article “Wheat productivity and profitability under conservation agriculture and diverse rotations consistently greater than those under conventional tillage in cold arid region”  is fully in the scope of the LAND Journal and of the specific Special Issue. The topic is of scientific interest and reports a case-study on the implementation of ecosystem-based management practice. The evaluation of a long-term experiment data, on 2 tillage management and 10 crop rotations, represents a huge experimental and management effort. Similarly, an evaluation from several point of views (biomass and seed yield, soil moisture, soil organic matter and economic indicators) has been appreciated.Some remarks have been found and a MAJOR REVISION is required before to accept the article for publication.

Response1.1: We very much appreciate Reviewers positive comments.

 

Reviewer 1.2: Title: the indication of a result in the title is not frequent in scientific articles, but can be accepted. I’d add a verb (is, results) after “rotations”.

Response1.2: We changed the title to make it more streamlined.

 

 

Introduction

Reviewer 1.3:  Pag. 2 Lines 42 and Table 2: the scientific names need to be reported in italics and with the initial of the classifier.

Response1.3: Corrected

 

Reviewer 1.4: Pag. 2 Lines 52-53: specify if 332 mm are referred to the rainfall of one complete year or to an average wheat growing season.

Response1.4: Corrected

Material and Methods

Reviewer 1.5: Pag. 4 Lines 140-146: replace “l” with “L” to indicate the volume unit measurement. Pag. 4 Lines 157: enclose a web reference, if exists. Pag. 5 Lines 164: delete the initials of authors. Pag. 5 Lines 168: replace “system” with “systems”. Pag. 5 Lines 170: add “P” after “0.05”.

Response 1.5: All corrected

 

Results

Reviewer 1.6: Pag. 6  Figure 2: indicate in the legend the considered soil depth.

Pag. 6  Figure 3: it has been repeated twice. Delete one of them.

Pag. 6  Figure 3: the size of text is too small; it is not readable. Increase the font’s size. Pag. 6  Figure 3: in the legend replace “underCA” with under CA”. Pag. 6 Lines 211-213: correction tracks are still active. Pag. 6 Lines 215: replace “ha -1” with “ha^-1”.

Response 1.6: All corrected

 

Reviewer 1.7: Page 7 Figure 4: this kind of box-plot needs to be better described, explain the meaning of coloured area, the horizontal line, the vertical bars, the outliers. It appears, however, very strange that in 2018 and 2021 the average values (horizontal line, I suppose) is close to zero, when other data are much higher. It indicates a very asymmetric data distribution, but in the text no reference to this has been reported. I require a check of these data and an explanation in the text.

Response 1.7 Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We agree that additional explanation would help make the plot more interpretable. The colored area indicates the interquartile range (25th to 75th percentile), The horizontal line within the box is the median, vertical lines extend to 1.5 times the interquartile range, and the dots represent outliers. The apparent low medians in 2018 and 2021 are a result of extremely dry climatic conditions during those years, which significantly reduced yields. These points have now been addressed in the manuscript text and figure caption.

Reviewer 1.8: Page 7 Figure 5: this figure is completely wrong. The default excel setting on error bars has been used, and so, all the horizontal error bars are the same, and this is not possible. Indicate in the legend if they represent the standard deviations or other statistics.

Response 1.8 Thank you for your valuable comment. We would like to clarify that the figure presents estimated marginal means (EMMs) derived from the fitted statistical model using the emmeans package in R. These are not raw measured values but model-based estimates, which explain why the error bars appear similar across treatments. The standard errors reflect the model’s estimation of uncertainty around the means and are adjusted accordingly, assuming no significant interaction effects were present in the model. To avoid confusion we have updated the X-axis titles to indicate that the values are estimated means, and we have clarified this in the figure.

 

Reviewer 1.9: Page 7 Line 233: replace “wheat-wheat” with “wheat-chickpea”.

Page 8 Line 249: add “, respectively” after “hectare”.

Page 8 Line 257: replace “every fourth year” with “after four years”.

Pag. 8  Figures 6 an 7: the size of text is too small; it is not readable. Increase the font’s size. Uniform the units in the legend (use always $ or USD).

Response 1.9 All corrected

 

 

Reviewer 1.10: In this section no reference to soil moisture and soil organic matter data has been reported. Some aspects on water use efficiency and soil quality, should be further analyzed.

Response1.10: There are almost no studies reporting soil performance conducted from a region similar to the current study under CA. We tried to indicate the relationship of soil moisture to yields and organic matter in the discussion but digging further into this may classify as speculation.

 

Reviewer 1.11: Pag. 9 Lines 275-276: replace with “highest” and “longest”.

Response 1.11 Corrected

 

Reviewer 1.12: Pag. 10 Line 341: this sentence is a personal estimation or it is a scientific result? Explain better and, in the second case, it needs of a reference.

Response 1.12: References provided. This is also based on the experiences and observations of the researchers.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

I recommend incorporating physical characteristics of the soils of the experimental plots (before, during, and after the end of the experiment), as well as annual climogram or climodiagram.

I am including some minor comments and recommendations in your paper

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer 2.1: I recommend incorporating physical characteristics of the soils of the experimental plots (before, during, and after the end of the experiment), as well as annual climogram or climodiagram.

Response 2.1: The physical characteristics are included. The precipitation graph is already provided and for a long-term data climogram or climodiagram would be very complicated due to large amount of data.

 

Reviewer 2.2 Line 30 Keywords. Authors should consider using different keywords from those in the title to enhance their work's impact on the scientific community, making it easier for readers to locate their research.

Response 2.2. We would appreciate some suggestions.

Reviewer 2.3 Lines 34 - 108. The authors should consider placing paragraphs that discuss the agronomic management employed for both conservation agriculture and mechanized tillage agriculture, highlighting the differences between the two production systems. This is because there is no reference to the production system in mechanized agriculture mentioned between lines 100 and 108.

The comment is focused on the impact of the constant disintegration of soil aggregates in mechanized agriculture, based on the collapse of the physical properties of soils. For example, on the macro and microporosity of the arable layer. The authors must specify the characteristics of the primary soils present in the research area and, if possible, their taxonomic classification according to the World Reference Base (WRB) classification. A characterization of the arable layer of the soils is recommended to the authors.

Response 2.3 We added further information on the soil physical characteristics. All the management details of CA and CT systems are provided in detail in the materials and methods section. The information include tillage implement types, seeders and herbicide applications.

 

Reviewer 2.4  Line 192. It is recommended to the authors to proportion the organic matter content before establishing the experimental plots, as well as the carbon-nitrogen ratio in the topsoil. The authors should mention the climograms of the study area in the last two years of the experiment.

Response 2.4 Unfortunately there is no data on initial soil organic matter content or C/N ratio. We doubt that climograms of the study area in the last two years of the experiment would enhance our interpretation. We already present a long term data on precipitation, which is the most important driver in this context. We also discuss snow cover days in the discussion section.

 

Reviewer 2.5  Discussion. The point of a dissertation is to know what happens within the arable layer in both conventional tillage and conservation agriculture. It is known that the transition and adverse impact of tillage is about 7 years for the conservation system to reach its maximum yield. It is recommended that the authors consult and consider this issue in their research work.

Response 2.5. We feel these points are already covered in the discussion.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Paper is well written overall.  I suggest a few changes/additions.

L. 111 Include longitude and latitude for the experimental site.  

L. 321 Difficulty with lentil harvest:  explain

L. 329 Explain what you are referring to with "in-row weed control"

L. 343 Why does wheat consistently fail after safflower

Figures are very complex and difficult to understand.  Can you simplify the presentation?

 

Author Response

Reviewer 3.1  Paper is well written overall.  I suggest a few changes/additions.

1. 111 Include longitude and latitude for the experimental site.  
2. 321 Difficulty with lentil harvest:  explain
3. 329 Explain what you are referring to with "in-row weed control"
4. 343 Why does wheat consistently fail after safflower

Figures are very complex and difficult to understand.  Can you simplify the presentation?

Response 3.1 All of Reviewer 3 comments and questions were answered and new references provided

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors have written the manuscript carefully on the topic of "Wheat productivity and profitability under conservation agriculture and diverse rotations," and I would like to suggest a few comments which can enhance readers' focus and overall technical details in general. 

Keywords: instead of using farm resiliency, use agricultural resiliency

The introduction and methodology sections are well written.

Results:

Can you please mention the p-value for Figure 1. 

What happened to Fig. 3? Why are you presenting this graph with the line? I would suggest revisiting this graph and making a bar chart with Tukey HSD test with alphabets such as a,b,c.. and it is very important to show the significance for the data presented. Please revise this. 

Fig. 7: Use the Tukey HSD test to represent this data efficiently. 

Discussion:

It is well written, and I highly recommend the policy intervention in this to connect the dots between efforts by governmental programs and the proposed research study. 

 

 

 

Author Response

Authors have written the manuscript carefully on the topic of "Wheat productivity and profitability under conservation agriculture and diverse rotations," and I would like to suggest a few comments which can enhance readers' focus and overall technical details in general. 

Reviewer 4.1 Keywords: instead of using farm resiliency, use agricultural resiliency. The introduction and methodology sections are well written.

Reviewer 4.1 Corrected

 

Reviewer 4.2 Can you please mention the p-value for Figure 1. 

Reviewer 4.2 Figure 1 is a precipitation graph with no statistical analysis, hence no p value.

 

Reviewer 4.3 What happened to Fig. 3? Why are you presenting this graph with the line? I would suggest revisiting this graph and making a bar chart with Tukey HSD test with alphabets such as a,b,c.. and it is very important to show the significance for the data presented. Please revise this. 

Response 4.3 We added the standard error bars which indicate the differences between the treatments. We believe that this graph should be a line graph because soil moisture change over time is best represented with a line.

 

Reviewer 4.4 Fig. 7: Use the Tukey HSD test to represent this data efficiently. 

Response 4.4 Corrected and letters added

Discussion:

Reviewer 4.5 It is well written, and I highly recommend the policy intervention in this to connect the dots between efforts by governmental programs and the proposed research study. 

Response 4.5 We already included the policy implications and government support suggestions in the conclusion.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors It can be accepted for the publication in the present form.