Effects of Chloropicrin, Dimethyl Disulfide and Metham Sodium Applied Simultaneously on Soil-Born Bacteria and Fungi

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The current manuscript entitled “Effects on soil-borne bacteria and fungi in different soils when fumigated with chloropicrin, dimethyl disulfide and metham sodium applied simultaneously” by Shi et al. deal with changes in the soil microbial community, including pathogenic fungi and bacteria as well as beneficial microorganisms, in five soils fumigated with chloropicrin (PIC), dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), and metham sodium (MS) applied concurrently ("triple fumigation") to clarify the impact on the overall structure of the soil microbial community while controlling complex and multiple pathogens. After careful reading, I found this work interesting and suitable for publication in the Agriculture MDPI journal after several clarifications. However, my major concern is regarding the English writing that affects the overall reading and logical scientific flow of the manuscript. Also, fumigants are highly toxic to most living things, including humans. What are the views of authors on these negative impacts? Thus, I recommend major revisions. Below are my specific comments.

1.      The whole abstract should be rewritten more clearly. It lacks major numerical findings and supporting conclusions. The original reading of the abstract should follow this pattern: Research problem, objectives, study design, major numerical results, major conclusion, the relevance of the results, and novelty to the currently available literature. These contents should be provided in <250 words.

2.      Several scientific names in the whole manuscript are not correctly written. Please follow standard practice for writing the names (e.g. 23, and many others).

3.      Line 33-34: How does reference number 5 appear after 3? Also, 9 after 5? I suggest placing them numerically correctly.

4.      The introduction should be elaborated with a more focused hypothesis in the second last paragraph. Also, several short paragraphs can be combined together.

5.      Avoid using impersonal terms such as “we, our, us, etc.” Rephrase those parts accordingly.

6.      All table and figure captions must be extended to cover more information regarding the contents presented therein. E.g. Table 1: Doses of fumigants used in laboratory experiments for what … ?

7.      The method section requires major attention. It should be rewritten with detailed information on material collection, source, company, storage, experimental and environmental conditions, and processing. For e.g. section 2.1. is unacceptable in its current form. Also, the treatment design in 2.3. is confusing. The author may simply justify the information using a flowchart.

8.      References are missing for all methods adopted.

9.      Extend the results with more logical reasons behind their trends. Writing just 3-4 lines doesn’t make any sense and it doesn’t add new scientific evidence to the currently available literature. This is the major flaw, the paper may be rejected based on this critical shortcoming.

10.   Figure quality is poor, no one can read them as the text size is very small. Also, when Duncan’s mean comparison was used, why authors did not mention significance marks? The aspect ratio and arrangement are poor.

11.   Too many figures, shift the abundance figures to supplementary material. Many tables/figures are not mentioned in the text.

12.   Too weak discussion, remove the headings and provide logical reasons while citing the most recent studies. More information on the interaction of selected fumigants and microbial communities must be discussed (biochemical and physical).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The title should be modified, e.g. Effects of chloropicrin, dimethyl disulfide and metham sodium applied simultaneously on soil-born bacteria and fungi

Line 23: the name of genera should be written in italic

Line 26: replace showed by evidenced

Line 33: it should be [1-3]

Line 34: citation numbered 4 is missing, please correct it

Lines 34-35: quotations should be numbered sequentially, there can't be 9 first and then 6-8...please put it in order, as required by the publisher

Line 50: where are citations numbered 12-14??? please rewrite ms text to keep the citation numbering correct

Line 56: replace These by Mentioned

Line 68: citation numbered 18 is missing

Line 82: used in the current experiment…

In Table 1 should be precised on what weight of soil a given dose of the fumigant was used

Line 85: more details is required regarding the collection of soils samples. From what area size were soil samples taken, according to what standard? What amount of soil material was taken? Was it taken from one place or from several and then combined into one sample? What was the sampling done with? Do the authors have knowledge of what type of soil they used for the study? Do the authors have knowledge of the basic chemical properties of these soils? such as pH, carbon content, etc.? Current description is so laconic that it is impossible to infer the representativeness of the samples taken.

Lines 91-92: What was the reason for storing samples this way?

Line 136: bioinformatics analyses require a more detailed description, with reference to the commands used and relevant citations. Not sure what base was used to determine taxonomy of fungi?

In Figure 1 no statistical differences are apparent (where the asterisks are?)? I suggest to modify either Figure quality or Figure description (title). If there is in fact no statistical differences maybe better will be move this Figure into Supplementary material?

The quality of Figure 2 demands to be improved. Descriptions of X and Y axis are unreadable in the current version. What is more, Y-axis ranges on both variants (bacteria, fungi) should be the same, then one can see the differentiation.

Description of Figure 2 demands more details, just one sentence of comment is not enough.

Figure 3, Figure 4, Figure 5 – the same comments as above, Y axis should be the same for bacteria and fungi. More interpretation is recommended.

Quality of Figure 5, Figure 7, Figure 8, Figure 9, Figure 10, Figure 11, Figure 12, Figure 13 and Figure 14 have to be improve into more readable form.

Additionally, Authors should remember that according the newest taxonomic rules only names of genera and species should be written in italic. Please correct it in the whole ms text.

Line 350: Ren et al. [23] reported…

Line 353: Zhang et al. [24] noted that…

Line 356: this part is not a discussion but a repetition of the results described

Line 358: which soil types do you studied? there is no information about this in the paper

Reference section also demands to be rewritten according journal style. In the current version Authors did not pay attention, for example, to correct punctuation and the use of journal abbreviations.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have revised the manuscript based on my comments and suggestions. I don't see any reason hindering the acceptance of this paper. Thus, I suggest acceptance in current form. Thank you.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for replaying on all of my comments. Please only pay an attention on journal abbreviations in References - I still found full names instead of abbreviations