A Seedling Collection Unit of a Mobile Automatic Device for Forest Tree Planting—An Extended Operating Concept

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review Comments for Manuscript Number: forests-2699291-peer-review-v1

Title:	Seedling collection unit of a mobile automatic device for forest tree planting - extended operating concept
Journal:	forests MDPI

This study presents a prototype designing of a mobile automatic device for performing forest regeneration tasks and afforestation of post-agricultural and reclaimed areas.  This machine is able to plant forest tree seedlings with a covered root system that are collected from twenty-seven nursery cassettes. The authors claim a higher efficiency for the current prototype in planting which would be a good and quick solution for seedling forests. The study is good and has good potential. However, I don’t see that it has a higher reliability in terms the number of forests that are needed to plant.

1.     I’m not sure if this paper is within the scope of the journal.

2.     The introduction needs to be expanded.

3.     Add prior art to the introduction. This paper could give you a hint for some prior art (https://www.hrpub.org/download/20200630/UJCA2-15016119.pdf) in your literature review.

4.     I don’t recommend such citing [6-14] in the introduction.

5.     The work novelty isn’t that clear

6.     What is the size of the machine presented in Figure 1?

7.     The cost analysis must be presented in the paper.

8.     Are the dimensions presented in Figure 2 and Table 1 global dimensions? Or it’s just case by case (changes from country to another)?

9.     Major English revision is required. Try to avoid long sentences (I can see three more lines sentence). Separate them.

10.  The machine won’t work in rainy or some restricted weather conditions, am I right?

11.  The rotating angle is 24 degrees is based on the size of the tray, isn’t it? If the tray is bigger then you can’t fit it in the machine?

12.  You can see form Figure 16 that the seedlings will loss a lot amount of soil around the seedlings, how this will affect the hole process of planting and the machine itself?

13.  Again, I feel that the machine contains a lot of stuff on it. Check the cost. I don’t think it will be a cost effective for such case.

14.  Make a comparison between the current machine and previous ones.

15.  Make a comparison in terms of time and cost when using hand planting with the current machine.

16.  The conclusion is tacky and needs further improvement.

17.  Add the above suggested paper to your references side by side with more updated references.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Extensive editing of English language required

Author Response

Thanks for reviewing the article. Below we send answers to the questions raised/issues raised in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please refer to the attachment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thanks for reviewing the article. Below we send answers to the questions raised/issues raised in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript has improved a lot. The authors answered all of my questions. I can see that this work is still in the research stage which is the reason that reaised my concern about the article. I'd like to accept this paper, but the authors have to:

1. Revise their conclusion again. Make it more comprehensive.

2. Add the future work to the conclusion in order to let the readers know that this work needs further studies to get the best performance from the design.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor English Revision is needed

Author Response

Thank you for your comments. We have made revisions to Conclusions, please see the attached revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf