Impacts of Organic and Conventional Management on the Nutritional Level of Vegetables

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript deserves for its publication in Sustainability but some points should be improved and explained by the Authors.

Remarks:

Line 129: The symbol "P" could be replaced with the full name of the chemical element "phosphorus" (probably).

Lines 149-156: Authors describing the objective of their research indicate that it was connected with estimating the impact of a different agricultural cropping system on vegetable quality by measuring vitamin C, lycopene, carotenoids and total antioxidant. What does "total antioxidant" mean? Please explain.

Line 282: Could the Authors provide additional information regarding the methodology for ascorbic acid and total antioxidant determination?

In the References part, the names of journals should be capitalized, e.g. item 12, 29, 45, 62 and without abbreviations (item 28, 38).

Author Response

Please find attached our responses to each of the questions posed by the first reviewer. We really appreciate the reviewer taking their time to provide very constructive critique of this manuscript that we believe will really strengthen it in terms of clarity and presentation of our research. Thank you.

 

Emmanuel Omondi (PhD).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript titled " Impacts of organic and conventional management on vegetative nutritional level over two years period" deals with an exciting subject as the comparison of organic and conventional management. Conclusions are interesting, but the presentation of the document can be improved. Some suggestions are given below.

Supplemental Figure 1: X-axis categories can not be read. I suggest putting the data every five days.

Lines 278-286. I know this is an agronomical study, but it is based on nutritional data, so I Think that in materials and methods, a description of the Analysis methods for all antioxidant’s compounds should be given. Was it by liquid chromatography?

In “Supplemental Table 2: Impacts of management practices of different vegetative mineral (macro- and micro-) nutrients over two years period; Micronutrients concentrations are expressed in ppm, and macronutrients concentrations are expressed in %”. Something is incorrect as if macronutrients are expressed in % the data given is not logical; for example, 3755±232ab for Na. I guest that this must be ppm as well.

Along with the document you employ the term significantly, but I think that it should be said as statistically significant differences.

In all figure captions, you should indicate what different letters mean in the figure.

The expression the antioxidant composition in kg ha^-1from a nutritional point of view it has no sense. It would be much more illustrative express in g or mg 100 g^-1 of vegetable.

All graph should have legends; for example, figure 15, 16 have no legends. You should revise those details.

Author Response

We greatly appreciate the reviewer taking time to review this manuscript which has greatly strengthened it and improved it in terms of clarity and presentation of this research. All the reviewer's concerns have been addressed, as explained in the attachment with our specific responses as well as within the manuscript text.

Thanks very much.

Emmanuel Omondi (PhD)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper concerns a very important topic of the reasons for the nutrient concentration decline in vegetables and fruits over the past 50-70 years. On examples of two-year observations, a positive effect of the organic farming system in comparison with conventional system is shown. The results are of scientific interest. Although the problem of the nutrient concentration decline is not fully disclosed. I think an important reason is the result of cultivation of early ripening newly plant varieties.

Author Response

We greatly appreciate the reviewer taking time to review this manuscript. We are especially grateful that the reviewer did not find any substantial issues worth addressing and agrees with us that our introduction provides sufficient background and includes all relevant references; that our research design is appropriate, our methods are adequately described, our results are clearly presented, and that our conclusions are supported by the results.

Thanks very much.

Emmanuel Omondi (PhD)

Reviewer 4 Report

General comment: The authors evaluated the effect of organic and conventional management on nutrient composition of various crops. The study was well designed and the manuscript well written. The data analysis was appropriate, and the discussion was thorough. Some key information was missing in the method section though and should be provided. Additional suggestions can be found in my specific comments.

 

Specific comments:

Lines 56-59: climate change is also a potential cause of the decreased crop nutrient quality.

Reference: Smith, M. R., & Myers, S. S. (2018). Impact of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions on global human nutrition. Nature Climate Change, 8(9), 834-839.

Line 98: “Citrus ×sinensis” is the correct scientific name for orange since it is a hybrid.

Line 117: Do not italicize “L. var.” and leave a space after “var.”.

Line 118: Do not italicize “L.”. Be consistent with the binomial names of the plants. Either include the authority or leave it out.

Line 238: Delete the first “=”.

Lines 278-286: Detailed methods of these analyses should be provided.

Line 369: Figures should stand alone. Please define the abbreviations such as Myc, CNV, MNR. Please also explain the compact letter display.

Line 396: Define “Trolox equivalent” in the figure caption.

Line 422: Were the asterisks for the comparison between Myc vs. Non-Myc., CNV vs. MNR, or 2004 vs. 2005?

Line 455: Explain the lowercase vs. uppercase letters

Author Response

We greatly appreciate the reviewer taking time to review this manuscript which has greatly strengthened it and improved it in terms of clarity and presentation of this research. All the reviewer's concerns have been addressed, as explained in the attachment with our specific responses as well as within the manuscript text.

Thanks very much.

Emmanuel Omondi (PhD)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 5 Report

Manuscript sustainability presents the impacts of organic and conventional management on vegetable quality. The subject is actual. Despite the fact that data are 15 years old,  the results presented are of interest for sustainability of different farming system. In order to be published manuscript needs to be extensively revisited. The redundant information should be removed, and missing information must be added.

The title refers to “vegetative nutritional level”. My opinion is that the title must be improved – i.e. “vegetables nutritional level”. Also, I think that the title need to include the impacts of organic and conventional management on crop response to water stress, which is largely presented and discussed in the manuscript. The title “Impacts of organic and conventional management on  nutritional level and water stress response of tomatoes, bell pepper and carrots” correspond better to manuscript content and conclusion.

L11-l12 from the Abstract is too general and must be deleted.

The Introduction Section is approximately 3 pages and contains almost 50 references. It needs to be much more focused and should be reduced in length.

The Material and method Section should be organized in Sub-Sections, i.e. Biological material, Experimental site, Experiment organization, Plant disease monitoring, Determination of marketable yield and (edible) yield quality, Statistical analysis.

Data from L309-L322 regarding weather and plant disease evolution must be separated. The data regarding weather evolution should eb presented in Material and methods section.

Better explanation regarding  experiment organization, i.e. crops rotation and winter cover crops must be presented. The data from Supplementary Material, i.e. Farming Systems Trial - Field Layout are not clear enough. The description of the field site and experiment details must be shortly presented in the manuscript and not sending the reader to 4 other papers -  Liebhardt, Andrews [53]; Lotter, Seidel [54]; Pimentel, Hepperly [19], and Ryan, Smith [52].

For example, the proposition from L190-L191 is confusing “The organic manure system (MNR) used composted manure applied at 40 Mg ha^-1 (wet weight) for grain corn and 60 Mg ha^-1 (wet weight) for silage corn.” What corn?  From Supplemental data we learnt that  c/C = compost applied before corn – therefore probably is a fertilization which used the composted manure applied to the previous crop. However, the fertilization is not limited to organic manure, because included a hairy vetch cover crop, which was incorporated into sol by moldboard ploughing. The impact of the nitrogen fixed by the cover crop is not described in relation to fertilization. Also, there are no information about contribution to fertilization of the uprooted soybean or clovers summer crops used in the NMR system. A more properly presentation of the complexity of the NMR system is necessary, in order to make the reader to understand it.

Also, weeding is not properly presented. On L254 it is written “Weeds were controlled with black plastic in both organic and conventional plots”. From Lines L191-L194 we learnt that “Cultural and mechanical weed management strategies were utilized in the MNR system. These included delayed planting, cover crops and crop rotation of summer grown row crops with winter cover crops.” This general description of the NMR system do not include black plastic. The role of clovers summer crops for weed control / weed suppression is not presented.

The AMF inoculum presentation  is very detailed. However, the methods used for vegetable nutritional quality (vitamin-C, total antioxidants, α- and β-carotenes, lycopene) are not presented and these should be shortly described. The type of ICP (MS? OES?) methods used for nutrient analysis should be also shortly described.

The Result Section should be re-organized on two Sub-Sections, Impact on nutritional quality  and Impact on water stress response. The nutritional quality should be firstly described, because this was the primary objective of the experimental work. Response to water stress  of vegetable was a side-effect and not an intended purpose of the experiment.

I suggest the same re-organization of the Discussion Section, focusing initially on impacts on nutritional quality and then in response of the vegetable crop to stress.

The Section Conclusion is too long and must be reduced.

There are also formal modification which shall be made in the manuscript. Empty line are not in accordance to Sustainability template.  

Sections Author Contributions, Funding, Acknowledgments, Conflicts of Interest, references should use Palatino Linotype of 9 pct.

On the Section Conflict of Interest, according to COPE rules and Sustainability journal template the authors must mention any the role of Funder, Campbell Soup Company, “in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results” – especially because it is a big delay in publication of the results.

If there is no role, the authors must use the recommend statement from Sustainability journal template.

Author Response

We greatly appreciate the reviewer taking time to review this manuscript which has greatly strengthened it and improved it in terms of clarity and presentation of this research. We have provided detailed responses to the reviewer's concerns in the attachment as well as addressed those concerns within the manuscript text.

Thanks.

Emmanuel Omondi (PhD)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

 

I think that the document has been improved after following all reviewers advises.
. The document is now better readable and the conclusions are clearer.

Author Response

We want to once again thank the Reviewer for taking time to review our manuscript one more time. We are grateful that the Reviewer did not find any additional issues for us to address this time around.

 

Thanks again!

Emmanuel Omondi (PhD)

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors have addressed all my comments. I have only a few minor suggestions, which can be easily modified in the proof. 

Line 44: To be consistent, there should be a “(iv)” before “climate change”.

Lines 259-260: Delete “The dry solid was”.

Author Response

We want to once again express our gratitude to Reviewer 4 for taking time to review our manuscript one more time. We have addressed the two suggested changes in Line 44 and 259 using Track Changes in Word.

 

Thanks again.

 

Emmanuel Omondi (PhD).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 5 Report

Authors improved their manuscript. However, in my opinion, the description of the management cropping system is still not clear. Table 1 mentioned about the use of 1-2 herbicide application in the conventional (CNV) system. L222-L225 mentioned that "Weeds were controlled with black plastic in both organic and conventional plots. Any additional weeds were removed by hand hoeing and hand weeding in both organic and conventional systems as there are few selective herbicide options for conventional vegetables." Therefore, no herbicide applied in conventional system.

Overall the Material and method section is difficult to follow. Authors refuse to follow the suggestion separate it into sub-headings.

Conflict of interest still not entirely disclosed.  The sponsor, Campbell Soup Company had previously provided Rodale Institute with seeds for tested vegetable. Is this the only role of the funder in the design of the study?

Author Response

We want to thank so much Reviewer 5 for taking time to review our manuscript one more time and provide constructive suggestions that we have used to improve the manuscript further. Specific response to those suggestions and questions are attached and/or included in the main text of the manuscript.

 

Thanks again.

 

Emmanuel Omondi (PhD)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf