Conservation Agriculture as a Sustainable System for Soil Health: A Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review of the manuscript: Conservation Agriculture as Sustainable System for Soil Health: A review

General comments: The manuscript is well written in English and reviews soil health indicators that can be classified as physical, chemical or biological and the impact of conservation agriculture on soil health. The introduction and review are well documented. However, there are some specific comments on the impact of conservation agriculture in the soil health section that need to be resolved before publication.

Comments to authors:

Since soil respiration was described as a biological parameter of soil health and that should be part of the minimum data set for soil health assessments (line 253). I strongly recommend including in the manuscript a subchapter 4.3.4 of Soil Respiration to describe the influence of this parameter on the biological properties of the soil (Line 837).

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,
Herewith we are resubmitting our manuscript entitled "Conservation Agriculture as Sustainable System for Soil health: A review". We revised the manuscript considering the comments received from you. The modifications made to the manuscript, can be found in the revised version (tracked changes) of the manuscript attached to this submission. We are thankful for the comments received as these improved our manuscript considerably.
Please do not hesitate to contact in case you have any questions.
Yours sincerely,

Víctor H. Durán 
On behalf of authors

At the suggestion of this reviewer, we have included a subchapter (4.3.4. Soil respiration) to discuss the use of this indicator to assess soil health and how CA practices influence this parameter. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

The manuscript " Conservation Agriculture as Sustainable System for Soil health: A review " deals with an important subject – conservation agriculture and its impact on main soil heath indicators. In times where we must cope with a series of challenges (Climate change, migrations, high population…) it is important to apply best agriculture practice. Conservation Agriculture can reduce the negative impacts of conventional agricultural practices and also help to mitigate negative impact of climate change. So that kind of manuscripts is very important to scientist to better understand importance of Conservation Agriculture and obtain important data/information’s from which new hypotheses for researches can be more easily drawn.

Summary is informative and it will encourage the reader to read the entire manuscript

Introduction is well organized and with good amount of information about past results. But it will be good to ad some information about CA and Climate change.

The rest of the paper is quite beautifully crafted with some minor remarks:

1.       Figure 1. I thin it will be better to just write soil instead Healthy soil, because all soils (healthy or not) can have some of the mentioned functions.

2.       I know that Climate change is not the main topic but I would like if you can better emphasize the importance of applying CA in the struggle with climate change.

3.       You mention quite often food security. Please explain a little better the mentioned term and its importance in relation to agricultural production.

4.       In general, the manuscript lacks graphs and tables that would follow previous researches (especially in crop production).

Summary

I recommend the manuscript for publication in Soil Systems after minor revision.

Sincerely yours,

Reviewer

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,
Herewith we are resubmitting our manuscript entitled "Conservation Agriculture as Sustainable System for Soil health: A review". We revised the manuscript considering the comments received from you. The modifications made to the manuscript, can be found in the revised version (tracked changes) of the manuscript attached to this submission. We are thankful for the comments received as these improved our manuscript considerably.
Please do not hesitate to contact in case you have any questions.
Yours sincerely,

Víctor H. Durán 
On behalf of authors

1. Figure 1 has been modified as suggested.
2. A paragraph has been inserted in the introduction to highlight the importance of CA as a climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy.
3. In section 2, a paragraph has been introduced to define and highlight the importance of the food security concept, as suggested by the reviewer.
4. The results of previous researches have been included through the references in the text.