Compositional Nutrient Diagnosis (CND) Applied to Grapevines Grown in Subtropical Climate Region

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study has high importance because it has not only scientific significance, but the results can be used in consultation as well.

The presentation of the results and the conclusions are of high quality.

I only suggest to amend the introduction by citation of some more references.

Author Response

Reviewer #1

This study has high importance because it has not only scientific significance, but the results can be used in consultation as well. The presentation of the results and the conclusions are of high quality. I only suggest to amend the introduction by citation of some more references.

R. Ok. We added references of the application of this technique in the year 2020 and we also added the hypothesis.

Reviewer 2 Report

Please find very minor corrections in the file of manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer #2

The text (Materials and Methods) does not provide any specific data of the pH of the tested soil

R. We removed the words "in acidic soil" from the title to be consistent with M&M and we did all the requested spelling corrections.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors in their manuscript “Compositional Nutrient Diagnosis (CND) applied to grapevines grown in acidic soil in subtropical climate region” used the CND methodology to established the critical level and the appropriate nutrient bands in the yield of grapevine cultures. To be honest, I did not find this approach to be novel, as it has been applied several times in other crops before. Nevertheless, the results consist of an interesting dataset regarding the cultivation and fertilization of Vitis vinifera.

I have some comments about the experimental design that needs to be addressed. The authors stated that they selected 81 grapevines belonging to species Vitis vinifera L; however, we have no information about the soil properties of these fields and why they were initially selected. The samples must have been collected from fields with similar properties, and this must be clear in the text. Otherwise, this is a serious issue. Moreover, they took their samples from a large number of Vitis vinifera varieties; I would have expected them to work on a single variety as this would eliminate the variability between varieties. They need to explain why they chose this approach.

More specific comments

The current structure of the manuscript is very confusing and the authors must reorganize several parts. Also, the text needs extensive linguistic editing.  

I found the introduction to be quite short, especially the aim of the study. As it is presented (in one line) it has the look of a survey and not of a scientific paper. I would advise the authors to state clearly their initial hypotheses, as this would help the reader to better understand the objectives of their study, and also it will allow the authors to better organize their discussion.

Soil property data about the cultivation fields should be presented as supplementary materials. Table 3 must also be a supplementary table.

In M&M a section explaining several things about statistical analyses must be added. Several paragraphs should move there as they don’t belong to the results, (e.g. lines 166-172). Also, the Mahalanobis distances are never explained in M&M, not even why they chose to present the relation between (CND- r2) and Mahalanobis distance.

The discussion of the results in many cases is very difficult to follow. The main findings are lost within all the information presented as results, M&M, and discussion at the same time. I believe that in this case, it would be better to have the discussion as a separate section. Also, the authors should try to give more depth to the explanation of their results based on what is written in literature. For instance, just writing “…Similar results were reported in a study on potato plants”(line 226) is not considered discussion as more are expected in order to clarify their results.

Reorder your reference numbering in the manuscript. Your first reference in the text is 18.

Author Response

Reviewer #3

I have some comments about the experimental design that needs to be addressed. The authors stated that they selected 81 grapevines belonging to species Vitis vinifera L; however, we have no information about the soil properties of these fields and why they were initially selected. The samples must have been collected from fields with similar properties, and this must be clear in the text. Otherwise, this is a serious issue. Moreover, they took their samples from a large number of Vitis vinifera varieties; I would have expected them to work on a single variety as this would eliminate the variability between varieties. They need to explain why they chose this approach.

R. The fertilization and liming manuals existing in Brazil and in several places in the world present ranges of nutrients for crops in general (CQFS-RS/SC, 2016). But it is known that the nutritional need for viniferous grapes and grapes for fresh consumption is different. So this work sought to establish the first specific range for vitis vinifera in Brazil through a more precise method than the critical level of the manuals. Now that we have proven that it is possible to generate more specific sufficiency ranges, the next step is to obtain a database of each cultivar and generate sufficiency ranges for each cultivar. But this work has not had this database.

The methodology we apply in this work requires data from leaf analysis and productivity (Parent and Dafir, 1992). The study was conducted in commercial vineyards close to each other. We take care to select areas with the same soil type, classified as Ultisols (line 85). Therefore, at that time we did not consider it necessary to collect soil samples in each of the areas because we would not use it in the applied mathematical model and because the soil was classified as the same for everyone.

More specific comments

The current structure of the manuscript is very confusing and the authors must reorganize several parts.

R.The organization of the article was inspired by other articles already published that use this methodology (Matos et al., 2016; Parent, 2011; Serra et al., 2010). We think it is consistent to maintain this organization because it facilitates understanding. And he is following the state of the art research to other published works worldwide with the theme.

I found the introduction to be quite short, especially the aim of the study. As it is presented (in one line) it has the look of a survey and not of a scientific paper. I would advise the authors to state clearly their initial hypothesis, as this would help the reader to better understand the objectives of their study, and also it will allow the authors to better organize their discussion.

R. Ok. We added the hypothesis (line 74-76).

Soil property data about the cultivation fields should be presented as supplementary materials.

R. The objective of the study was to use the CND method to generate the sufficiency range. This method does not use soil data in its mathematical model. So, we do not carry out chemical soil analysis in each area.

Table 3 must also be a supplementary table.

R. Ok, done.

In M&M a section explaining several things about statistical analyses must be added. Several paragraphs should move there as they don’t belong to the results, (e.g. lines 166-172).

R. Ok, done (line 157 -159 and 163-165).

Also, the Mahalanobis distances are never explained in M&M, not even why they chose to present the relation between (CND- r2) and Mahalanobis distance.

R. We insert (line 160-162).

The discussion of the results in many cases is very difficult to follow. The main findings are lost within all the information presented as results, M&M, and discussion at the same time. I believe that in this case, it would be better to have the discussion as a separate section. Also, the authors should try to give more depth to the explanation of their results based on what is written in literature. For instance, just writing “…Similar results were reported in a study on potato plants”(line 226) is not considered discussion as more are expected in order to clarify their results.

R. We found that articles that apply this method usually present the results and discussion in the same session so as not to make the article too long. As an example of articles with results and discussion in the same session, we highlight those that were published in Frontiers (Nowaki et al., 2017) and Canadian Journal of Soil Science (Parent et al., 2009) and that one of the authors is the inventor of the method (Leon Etienne Parent). We also changed the discussion to "Similar results were reported in a study on potato plants (Khiari et al., 2001) where the reference population also showed a great nutritional imbalance (R² = 0.34), showing that populations with adequate productivity may have the potential to improve further” (line 237-239).

Reorder your reference numbering in the manuscript. Your first reference in the text is 18.

R. Ok, done

References:

CQFS-RS/SC, 2016. Manual de Calagem e Adubação do RS/SC, 11th ed. Porto Alegre.

Khiari, L., Parent, L.-É., Tremblay, N., 2001. The Phosphorus Compositional Nutrient Diagnosis Range for Potato. Agron. J. 93, 815–819. https://doi.org/10.2134/agronj2001.934815x

Matos, G.S.B. de, Fernandes, A.R., Wadt, P.G.S., 2016. Níveis críticos e faixas de suficiência de nutrientes derivados de métodos de avaliação do estado nutricional da palma-de-óleo. Pesqui. Agropecuária Bras. 51, 1557–1567. https://doi.org/10.1590/s0100-204x2016000900055

Nowaki, R.H.D., Parent, S.-É., Cecílio Filho, A.B., Rozane, D.E., Meneses, N.B., Silva, J.A. dos S. da, Natale, W., Parent, L.E., 2017. Phosphorus Over-Fertilization and Nutrient Misbalance of Irrigated Tomato Crops in Brazil. Front. Plant Sci. 8, 825. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2017.00825

Parent, L.-É., 2011. Diagnosis of the nutrient compositional space of fruit crops. Rev. Bras. Frutic. 33, 321–334. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0100-29452011000100041

Parent, L.E., Dafir, M., 1992. A theoretical concept of compositional nutrient diagnosis. J. Am. Soc. Hortic. Sci. 117, 239–242. https://doi.org/10.21273/JASHS.117.2.239

Parent, L.E., Natale, W., Ziadi, N., 2009. Compositional nutrient diagnosis of corn using the Mahalanobis distance as nutrient imbalance index. Can. J. Soil Sci. 89, 383–390. https://doi.org/10.4141/cjss08050

Serra, A.P., Marchetti, M.E., Vitorino, A.C.T., Novelino, J.O., 2010. Desenvolvimento de normas DRIS e CND e avaliação do estado nutricional da cultura do algodoeiro. Rev. Bras. Ciência do Solo 34, 97–104. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0100-06832010000100010

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

the manuscript can now be published

Author Response

Thank you.