Soil Microbial Community Driven by Soil Moisture and Nitrogen in Milk Vetch (Astragalus sinicus L.)–Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) Intercropping
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1. The relevance, importance and innovative aspects of the paper should be more evident.
2. Add your recommendations for future research.
3. Please present a strong case for how this work is a major advance. This needs to be done in the manuscript itself, not just in the response to review comments.
4. Please be sure that the abstract and the conclusions section not only summarize the key findings of the work but also explain the specific ways in which this work fundamentally advances the field relative to prior literature.
5. The aim of the research is not clearly defined. Add correct hypothesis and correlate with objective clearly.
6. The methodology should be described in more detail. In the ,Materials and methods’ section the authors did not indicate the sources of literature different methods used.
7. Why the analyzes concern only one period in a year?
8. What do you mean - 2.4. Soil environment????????
9. Please explain why the Ducan’s t-test was used.
10. Discussion chapter - This seems to be the core of the manuscript. You should make it much more clear.
11. You should better explain why the dominant soil microbial communities in intercropping were the same as in monoculture, with Chloroflexi, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria, Firmicutes, Gemmatimonates and Bacteroidetes.
12. Make sure the references are added correctly according to the journal's instructions.
13. The language correctness should be verified by a native speaker.
Author Response
We think that the reviewer has put forward valuable comments for our study. We have mainly revised the introduction and discussion in response to your comments. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
A very interesting topic for research work.
The abstract fully reflects the content of the article, it is written in clear and understandable language.
Material and methods described in an exhaustive way and allowing for an in-depth analysis of the experience.
Test methods selected correctly, typical for this type of research.
One can write a subsection of statistical analyzes.
The results are widely presented, so this section can be extended with more detailed descriptions of selected statistical methods / analyzes.
The presentation of the research results at a high level should be underlined.
The charts are explained in detail.
High-level discussion, citations from recent years, which increases the value of the work.
Please expand the conclusions as well.
After minor corrections, I recommend the work for printing.
Author Response
We think that the reviewer has put forward valuable comments for this article. We have mainly revised the statistical analysis and conclusions in response to your comments. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
General Recommendations/comments
Great manuscript that provides evidence that intercropping not only reduces moisture loss but increases the bacterial community diversity.
Specific recommendations
Lines 40-42 – End of sentence could be changed from “soil microorganisms for respiration by controlling the availability and mobility of soluble organic matter.” to “soil microorganisms require for respiration by controlling the availability and mobility of soluble organic matter.”
Lines 119 – What do you mean by “impurities”?
Figure 3 – Only show letters above box and whisker graphs where significant differences are found.
Figure 5 – Might be best described in a table so the reader can clearly identify where the differences are?
Figure 6 – The differences could be shown more clearly by using letters above the box and whiskers.
Figure 7 – How much of the variation in communities was explained by the variables that were used and what portion of that variation is explained by each of the RDA1 and RDA2? Also what are the R2 and p values for these graphs?
Line 287 – Leave out “etc”, relationships need to be described in text as they help provide context.
Line 312 – Does intercropping improve nodulation or increase nodulation in legumes?
Lines 325-327 – End of sentence could be changed from “energy substances that soil microorganisms for respiration by controlling the availability and mobility of soluble organic matter.” To “energy substances available to soil microorganisms for respiration controlling the availability and mobility of soluble organic matter.”
Author Response
We think that the reviewer has put forward valuable comments for this study. We have mainly revised the introduction, discussion and figures for your comments. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Response no. 1 of Authors - In an intercropping system, microorganisms are the key members of SOM decomposition and transformation[19], which can transform nutrients that are not easily absorbed by crops into nutrients that are easily absorbed[20,21]. For example, rhizobia convert atmospheric nitrogen into NH4+ and/or NO3-[22-25]. Therefore, it is of great significance for agricultural sustainability that the effects of the soil environment on microorganisms during intercropping be explored
The relevance, importance and innovative aspects of the paper should be more evident. The Authors did not present innovative aspects of the paper. The Authors presented the basic knowledge on the role of microorganisms in the soil.
The name of 2.4. chapter is incorrect. Authors should use the term "soil physico-chemical analysis".
Response 10 We sorted out the discussion rewriting, discussed and revised the main results, and added necessary content: why dominant microorganisms were the same in intercropping and monoculture. Please check it in the discussion (Lines 345-348, 367-377, and 379-381).
Discussion chapter - This seems to be the core of the manuscript. You should make it much more clear.
From my side, the bigest issues that there were not cleary hypotheses in this study befor, I suggest the Authors should to compare and discuss their hypotheses to the proposed hypotheses others autors in the Discussion section.
Author Response
We have made revisions in response to your comments. Hope that our responses have improved the manuscript. If you have any further suggestions, please don't hesitate to give us your review comments again. It will be very helpful to improve our paper.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
