Reclaimed Salt-Affected Soils Can Effectively Contribute to Carbon Sequestration and Food Grain Production: Evidence from Pakistan
, Muhammad Sabir 1, Hamaad Raza Ahmad 1, Muhammad Shahbaz 2 and Jo Smith 3,*
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript titled “RECLAIMED SALT-AFFECTED SOILS CAN EFFECTIVELY CONTRIBUTE TO CARBON SEQUESTRATION AND FOOD GRAIN PRODUCTION: EVIDENCE FROM PAKISTAN” is generally well prepared and of significance. While some sections need to be further improved before publication.
1. L113, @? Please ensure that.
2. L252, please specify the determining process for BCR.
3. L282, “n” ; L295, “p” used italic type
4. Figure 5-6, not clear about fresh or dry weights, leaves or shoot, please revise the figure and e.g. mark clearly in the Y-axis and X-axis.
5. Figure 8, Table 3, without statistical analysis?
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Farooqui et al conducted a study to determine the effectiveness of organic amendments for reclamation of the salt-affected soils, carbon sequestration and food grain production in wheat-maize fields suffering from soil salinity. The experiment is fine, however, there are few points that should be considered to increase the value of the manuscript and may be readability.
-First of all, I would like to suggest that authors could highlight the benefit, novelty and the future prospect of the study both in abstract and introduction.
-In the abstract, please mention the year when maximum wheat yield was recorded with gypsum in combination with farmyard manure.
-Why wheat-maize crops were chosen for the study? Please add some information in the introduction.
-Please write in terms of Feekes scale, at what stage photosynthetic measurement was done.
-What were the two factors in two-way analysis of variance?
-Please add letters for statistical difference in Figure 8.
-Conclusion is just the summary of results. Please elaborate in terms of future prospects and implications of the study.
I believe that the manuscript can be accepted once the authors address the mentioned points.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This is a sound manuscript that discusses a relevant topic.
Below some comments to further strengthen this work:
-line 31-35: Maybe mention one more time the global warming is pushing more and more of this salinization to happen. It really is a big issue.
-line 44: Getting this additional gypsum is actually not that simple as first estimates for the EU show (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106328). This can also be a big porblem globally if agriculture starts cometing with the building industry for resources.
-Fig. 1: Pubjab map is a bit distorted - not sure if it is really needed anyway...
-Fig. 1 - make sure you have the copyrights of the pictures, I would probably just omit the pictures. The text in the picture on the right is to small to be read anyway
-You are using a lot of titles, maybe consider using less
-Fig. 5 check x-axis - same fig. 6, 7
-conclusions should be longer and provide more quantitative results. You have a lot anyway.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
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