Poplar Sawdust Biochar Altered Community Composition of Dominant Soil Fungi but Not Bacteria Depending on Pyrolysis Temperature
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Review report: forests-2412159
The findings could be interesting for researchers. However, following comments should be addressed before proceeding this manuscript for further. Authors are highly recommended to correct manuscript as per following suggestions for enhancing readability and reproducibility of results.
1. Title is too long. Please summaries it.
2. Abstract: Decrease the results with keeping the main results and include a very clear conclusion and future prospect.
3. The major concern is that this manuscript is lack of innovation and these results have been extensively reported in previous studies. Please include novelty of this study in the last paragraph of introduction section.
4. The following references maybe helpful for this paper and recommended to be cited.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.160860; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.131176; https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-022-09608-z
5. Hypothesis and justification of the selection of Pyrolysis conditions (temperature treatments) were not explicitly mentioned in the material and methods. Why have you chosen 350 and 600 °C? Please include it in the main text.
6. Lines 88-99 should be moved to the results and discussion section.
7. Lines 131-171: Please include standard references for every soil biochemical and physical properties
8. There was no information about plant protection management during the growth stage, harvest time of plants, number of plants in each pot and so on.
9. In my opinion it would be better if you can introduce high resolution figures.
10. Authors are highly recommended to rearrangement of discussion section like results.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
*Figures have clarity issues. Definitely needs to be fixed.
Line 26: What are the meaning of MBN and MBC?
Line 105: Why do you prefer Cyclocarya paliurus in experiment?
Line 199: What do the bars in figure 1, 2, 3 and 4 show?
Line 205: “be-tween” typo needs to be corrected
Line 281: What do the ± values in Table 2 mean?
Line 483: “These results” should be used instead of “Our results”
Line 493: In the conclusion part, instead of making a broad summary of the findings, the results obtained should be summarized in a shorter way.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
1. English language usage is questionable and evident from first sentence of the abstract. I will suggest a thorough revision of the Manuscript to enhance scientific and grammatical soundness of the write up.
1a. Explain the abbreviations such as MBC and etc. when using for the first time even in the abstract
2. Line 51 sentence ending on 'soil microbial' looks incomplete to me.
3. Introduction is lacking novelty statement and clear description of the objectives of the study.
4. Whether the experiments were repeated or not to validate the results?
5. Did you check the iron availability in the soil as it also plays role in microbial community establishment before and after biochar application?
6. Quality of figures and graphs has to be improved as they are not readable.
7. Please also update the reference list and focus more on last 5 to 6 years of research work.
8. Conclusion should not be the repetition of the results, better to revise. Highlight salient outcomes of the work and their further consequences.
9. What should be done in future to carry your work further.
10. Discussion section lacking in depth analysis of microbial community dynamics impact on plants and ecosystem as a whole both in the absence and presence of biochar.
English language usage is questionable and evident from first sentence of the abstract. I will suggest a thorough revision of the Manuscript to enhance scientific and grammatical soundness of the write up.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Editor,
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to re-evaluate this paper. From my point of view, this paper has gained in value after revising based on the reviewer comments and is ready to be accepted. I would like to inform you that I am willing to contribute in another papers related to my expertise submitted to this journal.
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have improved the manuscript considerably.
The authors have improved the manuscript considerably.
