Effect of Adoption of Climate-Smart-Agriculture Technologies on Cereal Production, Food Security and Food Diversity in Central Mali

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

See attached letter. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Author information

Additional information is required for the author's institution (refer to the template provided by the journal).

Abstract

Background to the study needs to be provided in the abstract. I recommend rewriting 10-13 lines to distinguish the study context from the experimental setting.

The results section should ideally be labelled using serial numbers to make it easier for the authors to read.

The significance of the study should also be provided in the abstract.

Keywords

Change the keywords to 5. Alternatively, keywords could be considered in alphabetical order;

Introduction

Lines 30. Total number of countries added by the author.

Lines 58-63. Rewrite the paragraph. The information that needs to be added is: the methodology of the study, feasibility, content of the study, and significance of the study.

Methods and materials

Figure 1 is not clear.

Discussion

The authors should discuss the significance of this study in more depth. Comparisons with existing literature, prospects for the techniques used in this study, etc. could be considered.

Additional scope for future research is recommended.

Conclusion

I prefer to express the conclusions of the study using the form of a serial number. Also, the author should try to streamline each conclusion, which is the difference with the results and discussion.

Author Response

See attached comment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have addressed most of my concerns on their manuscript. This revision by the authors has improved this manuscript.  In particular, the authors rewrote some parts of the abstract by providing information of their sampling techniques, methodologies, and recommendations.

Concerning the introduction, the authors also rewrote and re-organized the text to enhance the flow of thoughts and ideas. Furthermore, they attended to all my comments on the result section of their manuscript.

However, I discovered that there are still some typos and a few (minor) concerns that the authors still need to address. Once these minor concerns and typos are addressed, I would recommend the manuscript for publication. The minor concerns and typos are provided below:

Minor Concerns

1.      The authors stated in lines 83-87 that “In the villages included in the project, about 30% of the households were randomly selected to assess the impact of the project. In total 204 households were randomly sampled. Of these were 125 households from villages participating in the project and 79 from households 86 not participating in the project (Table 1).” How did the authors know that they selected 30% of households in each of the villages where the project was implemented without conducting census of all household in each village?

2.      The authors should make it clear that they are referring to the households selected from the projects areas when they are discussing about the rate of adoption of these technologies (see, for instance, lines 160 and 161).

3.      In lines 227-234, the authors mentioned the challenges related to technologies adopted by ACC households, but they did not provide table for the information about the constraints or tell the readers where this information is coming from. Is the information provided in lines 227-234 a general knowledge in the country or is a specific information from the households selected from the ACC project areas?

4.      In lines 247 and 248, the authors reported that microdosing has a cost of about 1650 FCFA (2.5 Euro) per hectare. What is the source of this information?

5.      The authors should provide the in-citation [?,?] of the two other studies in Mali they mentioned in line 262.

6.      The authors should provide the source of the information in lines 290-292: “An experiment conducted over four years in the Mopti region in Mali showed that the combined effect of seed priming and microdosing increased millet yield by 424 kg/ha.”

7.      In line 316, should it be “Nutrition studies” or “A nutrition study”?

8.      The authors claimed that they used Analysis of Variance, Chi-square test and Two-sample t-test to analyze their data. However, there are no clear tables or presentations of the results that supported their claim of using these analytical techniques.

Minor Typos

1.                  “horticulture-” in line 18 should be “horticulture”

2.                  “1ertilizer” in line 19 should be “fertilizer”

3.                  The double dots “..” in line 24 should a single dot “.”

4.                  “as result” in line 42 should be “as a result”

5.                  “Yet” in line 48 should be “However” or “Nonetheless”

6.                  “treat” in line 53 should be “threat”

7.                  “how” is line 67 should be “about how”

8.                  In line 95, “animal drawn planter” should be “animal-drawn planter”

9.                  In lines 97 and 98, the sentence should be recast as “Microdosing consists of mixing seeds and fertilizer (NPK 16:16:16) in a one-to-one ratio before sowing and applying this mixture in the planting hole.”

10.              In line 99, the sentence should read “This corresponds to 7.5 kg NPK per hectare when planting density is 25000 hills per hectare.” There is a typo of “per ha^-1”

11.              There is a typo in Table 2. In the row for cultivated area (ha) and in the column three (Ségou), “10,1” should be “10.1”

12.              The following information (***(P ≤ 0.001) ; **(P ≤ 0.05) ; *(P ≤ 0.1) ; ns : non-significant) provided at the bottom of Table 2 should be removed since the information does give any clue to the figures in the table.

13.              In line 168, there should be a full-stop mark after (Fig. 3).

14.              In line 212, “a FCS” should read “an FCS”

15.              There is a typo in line 332. “Oher studies” should read “Other studies”. Also, the authors should provide additional source(s) or citation(s) to [22] since they are referring to “other studies”.

16.              The authors should provide the source of the data in lines 333 and 334: “The average HDDS was 6.84 in the hunger season in rural areas and 7.45 in the post-harvest season which is slightly above the level for HDDS in our study.”

17.              In line 452, “Partey ST.” should be “Partey, S.T.”

18.              In line 96, “sahelian goat” should be “Sahelian goat”

Author Response

Se attached file. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx