The Rhizobial Microbiome from the Tropical Savannah Zones in Northern Côte d’Ivoire
, Romain Kouakou Fossou 1,*, Anicet Ebou 1,2, Chiguié Estelle Raïssa Amon 1, Dominique Kadio Koua 2, Claude Ghislaine Zaka Kouadjo 3, Don A. Cowan 4 and Adolphe Zézé 1Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I marked "average" for "originality/novelty" because the manuscript describes genetic diversity of few rhizobial populations, and studying the diversity is a routine procedure. However, studies are well-done and well-described, therefore I think the paper is interesting and worth to publish.
Minor objections:
In Results, the headings of 3.1. and 3.2 section are the same - is it proper? Moreover, I think that l.64-70 should not be placed in Results section - maybe at the end of Introduction?
Author Response
Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
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Reviewer 2 Report
The reviewed manuscript is innovative. The methodology does not raise any objections. The division into chapters is justified. The results are well presented. The conclusions correspond to the purpose of the studies.
Please improve the quality of Figures 5 and 6 and ensure that the literature is properly cited.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
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Reviewer 3 Report
The paper addresses an important and emerging issue that has been underestimate for decades, constituting an important steps towards the understanding of the contribution of savanna's microorganisms to ecosystem services. Despite the high quality of the paper, in my opinion it deserver minor revisions in the Materials and Methods; Results; and Discussion:
(1) Can you provide more information about the natural wooded grassland soils natural forest and savanna soils, e.g. dominant tree species and if the soils belong to any specific rhizosphere?
(2) Improve formats of tables 2 and 3
(3) Figures 3 and 4: include the legends of CI11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20, and 44
(4) Take out from the results the components that belong to the discussion, e.g lines 129-130; 199-201
(5) Lines 215-221: Please rearrange this paragraph, taken into account:
- The fact that the existence of some publications about the microbiome of Cerrado does not mean that it has been investigated in detail; in fact savanna microbiome studies are incipient and the areas covered are residual to be considered “well studied”;
- This study is among the pioneer studies on African savannahs but it is not the first – please refer to 1016/j.syapm.2016.05.004; 10.3390/microorganisms8091291; and the recently published work of Maquia et al. (2021) – https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2607/9/8/1562/pdf
(6) Please develop more on the dynamics of rhizobia diversity according to the sampling sites, ie. predominant woodlands and forest vegetation, and the different crops; and how does it compare to the above referred studies (African Soil Microbiomes) as well as to the those from Cerrado?
Author Response
Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
