Effects of Orchard Grass on Soil Fertility and Nutritional Status of Fruit Trees in Korla Fragrant Pear Orchard

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

No doubt, grass cultivation can effectively improve soil fertility but long term  study gives more relevant findings. Please mention the botanical name and family of the both grasses in the manuscript for better understanding of readers. Please mention the nutrient content (NPK) of the both grasses so that, anyone can understand that increase in the nutrient level in pear orchard is due to biomass fallen after mowing in the orchard or there is role  symbiotic microbes associated with roots of the purslane and dogtail grasses. How, we can fix only 2 type of grass when in is a natural grass cultivation, please clarify. Please make conclusion more clear in relation to objective of the study.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Line13: space between orchard,and (Correct: orchard, and)

Line 55: space between 60%,and  as 60%, and

Line 124: the sentence will continue as below:

5 years of natural grass 124  cultivation was significantly and extremely significantly……

Line 164: cultivation of 2 years  and cultivation 2 years is not correct

Line 172: shooots is wrong and correct is shoots

Line 173: shooots is wrong and correct is shoots

Line 175: shooots is wrong and correct is shoots

Line 233: phosphorus. The is wrong and the correct is phosphorus and the

Line 238 : missing (printing) with total nitrogen and the corrected will be

with nitrogen, total potassium

Line 258: Grass will be grass (small case of g)

Line 274 : Li et al. here the year of work is missing

Line 276: Astragalus adsurgens will be italic Astragalus adsurgens

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Reviewer Comments:

Graphical abstract: Not provided or provided with less informative. Suggestion to provide graphical abstract with 3D style so that it is more attractive.

Tables: Try to include more meaningful tables in manuscript.

Figures: Figures are in low resolution. Kindly use higher definition images.

General comment:

This paper is research on the natural grass cultivation as soil management method in pear orchards. Overall, this paper has well covered a wide range of different treatment methods on nutrient content, soil, leaves and shoot of pear plants over 5 years. Also, authors need to perform critical analysis and interpret all these studies and come up with a conclusion for each section. It’s good that you had this finding written but readers would preferable want to know what had you concluded from all these studies, instead of what the author of the literature studies had concluded. To conclude, this paper needs to revise it carefully before it can be considered in high impact journal. Hope below comments will be able to help to further improve the paper.

Specific comment:

Abstract:

-      Suggest modifying the title to be more attractive and related to the current trends.

-      Needs major revision prior to the amendment of the main content.

-      An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. Hence the problem statement, aim, novelty and results of the study, all should be included into the one paragraph of abstract.

-      It is suggested that some meaningful result values can be included in this section as well.

-      Please try to merge all information into a paragraph with some attractive and new findings.

Keywords:

-       Kindly modify the keywords are not the same as the title, because keywords are a tool to help indexers and search engines find relevant papers. If database search engines can find your journal manuscript, readers will be able to find it too. This will increase the number of people reading your manuscript, and likely lead to more citations.

-       Please arrange according to alphabetical order.

Introduction:

-      Introduction should be covered the gap of the research. However, it is not well covered in this section, it needs to be more specific instead of using only one sentence to cover that.

-      Also, please mention the important of this study to society as well as industry.

-      Page 2, Line 41-47; it is mentioned the proposed solution for soil fertility improve, what about the other existing methods? Why is the proposed method better than other methods?

-      Please revised the Introduction section based on the structure below that can make it more clearly:

1st paragraph: Problem statement

2nd paragraph: Current ongoing solution

3rd paragraph: Proposed solution in this work.

4th paragraph: Summarized the current research novelty and objective of this work.

-      Problem statement of your introduction is not strong, need to discuss more about it.

-      A good introduction should conclude the introduction by mentioning the specific objectives of the research.

-      Kindly refer to those additional materials to revise this section: (1) Intercropping Wolfberry with Gramineae plants improves productivity and soil quality; (2) Sustainable utilization of biowaste compost for renewable energy and soil amendments; (3) Effects of grass growing on soil fertility and productivity of orchards in China: A metaanalysis; (4) The effects of biofertilizers on growth, soil fertility, and nutrients uptake of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) under greenhouse conditions

-      The earlier paragraphs should lead logically to specific objectives of the study.

-      Note that this part of the Introduction gives specific details: for instance, the earlier part of the Introduction may mention the importance of this study whereas the concluding part will specify what methods of control were used and how they were evaluated.

-      At the same time, avoid too much detail because those belong to the Materials and Methods section of the paper.

Materials and Methods:

-      Authors need to specify the source of materials were used

-      Also, authors are encouraged state the location of the equipment in this report.

-      Please elaborate more on the methodology as current description of method is not easy to understand and readers hard to repeat the analysis.

-      Page 2, Line 76-78; what are the six treatments mentioned? Please specify the difference between each treatment.

-      Page 3, Line 86-87; if possible, try not to use arrows to present arrangement orders in main text.

-      Statistical analysis is not provided, if possible, try include it in manuscript.

-      Please provide an additional figure to illustrate the process of he whole methodology.

Results and discussion sections

-      The overall structure needs to be improved

-      It is suggested that both results and discussion sections can be combined into single section to ease elaboration/explanation on each results data.

-      Very limited information about the detail regarding the listed techniques.

-      Kindly improve on the discussion. What is the significance of the results of the work?

-      It is suggested that both results and discussions sections can be combined into single section. Results obtained followed by explanation allow better and easier understanding by readers.

-      Page 8, Line 265-280; “…basically consistent with the results of previous studies.”, why is it similar with previous studies? Why and how does grass cultivation increase total P, N and K contents?

-      The discussions lacked of comprehensive explanation and elaboration on the results obtained. Current format are just comparing with literature without detailed explanation as of why the results obtained.

-      There are some important information from this paper that authors are recommended to refer: (1) Effects of green-manure and tillage management on soil microbial community composition, nutrients and tree growth in a walnut orchard; (2) Soil mineralization as effects of plant growth promoting bacteria isolated from microalgae in wastewater and rice straw application in a long-term paddy rice in Central Viet Nam; (3) Effects of Living Grass Mulch on Soil Properties and Assessment of Soil Quality in Chinese Apple Orchards: A Meta-Analysis; (4) Advanced green bioprocess of soil carbohydrate extraction from long-term conversion of forest soil to paddy field

-      It is quite doubt on some figures. Please recheck.

Conclusions

-      Good but please include the limitations and what can be done for the future studies.

-      It is suggested to include additional information or clarifications to the methods and results sections to evaluate the manuscript's novelty and its significance to the field.

-      Kindly improve to more concise with significant results.

References

-      Kindly revise reference format according to the author guideline.

-      It is suggested to cite references within 5 years of research to maintain the reliability of results obtained.

-      There are references found to be outdated.

Moderate editing of English language required

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors, please find below detailed comments on the manuscript:

1) Add the purpose of the work to the abstract

2) Add, at the end of the introduction, the exact purpose of the work

3) 2.4. Data Processing - you pointed to the parametric version of ANOVA, add information that the normality of the distribution of the data population was tested, the homogeneity of variance in the samples, etc. (what tests, what was their result, add a statement that it allowed the use of parametric ANOVA)

4) Figures 2-6, what do the "error bars" mean? Add information in section 2.4. (Sd+average, 5%?, etc.)

5) The readability of all drawings should be improved

6) 3.4. Correlation Analysis ... what correlation? (Pearson?)

7) 5. Conclusions - this is a summary, I suggest changing the title to "Summary"

8) Add a few (3-4) items of new (2020-2022) literature to the list of literature, there are many new scientific reports, including topics (Germany-Bavaria, grass + goats or sheep, fertilizing effect).

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript is corrected and revised according to the reviewer's comments. I am now satisfied with the new version, so I would like to recommend its publication.

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

I have made specific modifications to the English language of the article and marked the modifications red. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

I thank the authors for taking into account the comments. 

Author Response

I have made specific modifications to the English language of the article and marked the modifications red.  Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx