Eco-Physiological Properties of Open-Field Cucumbers Responded to Organic Liquid Fertilizers
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thanks to Authors for sharing your work. Results presenting the effect of organic liquid fertilizers on the soil environment and on the performance of open-field cucumbers are very interesting and needed to futher investigation in other crops. However, in my opinion according to Authors hypothesis in line 35 („little has been studied about the relationship between fruit productivity and chemical and bio-physical changes 35 occurring in the soil during the cultivation of organic cucumber plants”) answer is not provided…it would be interesting to present them according to Pearson’s correlation coefficients for fruit productivity and plant nutrition for treatments. In conclusion please add possible practical implementation of the obtained results with the indication which is the best for cucumber plants.The line 260 (such as auxin, cytokinin, and organic acids through degradation of the fermentation process [35]) should be included in discussion section.
Please find these minor comments in order to improve your manuscript:
- change the page layout to portrait for the first pages by introducing section in MS Word.
- in whole manuscipt use SI units for example g∙kg-1
- use italics for latin names
-table 3 –use dot instead 0/98 column one and three use dots instead commas
-in Figure 2 there is a lack of markings (A,B) in the description of figure
- figure 2- reduce the graph to be fully visible or change the page orientation
- line 179- should be bioindicator?
- figure 5 –description of Y axis –should it be “regions”? not lesions?
- Table 6 – change page orientation or reduce table, there is lack of abbreviation descriptions for example for “L”, “a”, “b”, “hue”
-line 257: organic not “orgnaic”
Before publication manuscript should be checked for English language and style.
Author Response
Thanks to Authors for sharing your work. Results presenting the effect of organic liquid fertilizers on the soil environment and on the performance of open-field cucumbers are very interesting and needed to futher investigation in other crops. However, in my opinion according to Authors hypothesis in line 35 („little has been studied about the relationship between fruit productivity and chemical and bio-physical changes 35 occurring in the soil during the cultivation of organic cucumber plants”) answer is not provided…it would be interesting to present them according to Pearson’s correlation coefficients for fruit productivity and plant nutrition for treatments.
→ Pearson’s correlation coefficients for fruit productivity and plant nutrition for treatments were not strongly related, and I corrected the line 35 .(„little has been studied about the relationship between fruit productivity and chemical and bio-physical changes 35 occurring in the soil during the cultivation of organic cucumber plants”) “However, little has been studied about the the effects of LF on chemical and bio-physical changes occurring in the soil during the cultivation of organic cucumber plants, thereby influencing the fruit productivity. Please see the lines 49-51.
In conclusion please add possible practical implementation of the obtained results with the indication which is the best for cucumber plants.
-> SO treatment is the best for the cucumber plants and soil environements, please see the lines 328-330. Also, the effects of climate and soil variables on agronomic parameters of cucumber could change over the time, changing the findings, was added. please see the lines 330-333.
The line 260 (such as auxin, cytokinin, and organic acids through degradation of the fermentation process [35]) should be included in discussion section.
→ The line 260 (such as auxin, cytokinin, and organic acids through degradation of the fermentation process [35]) was moved into discussion section. Please see the lines 312-316.
Please find these minor comments in order to improve your manuscript:
- change the page layout to portrait for the first pages by introducing section in MS Word.
- in whole manuscipt use SI units for example g∙kg-1
-> It was changed as you recommended in the whole manuscript.
- use italics for latin names
-table 3 –use dot instead 0/98 column one and three use dots instead commas
-> It was changed as you recommended in the manuscript.
-in Figure 2 there is a lack of markings (A,B) in the description of figure
-> The markings (A,B) were described in the manuscript.
- figure 2- reduce the graph to be fully visible or change the page orientation
-> It was changed as you recommended in the manuscript.
- line 179- should be bioindicator?
-> Yes, it was changed as you recommended in the manuscript.
- figure 5 –description of Y axis –should it be “regions”? not lesions?
-> regions, is correct. It was changed as you recommended in the manuscript.
- Table 6 – change page orientation or reduce table, there is lack of abbreviation descriptions for example for “L”, “a”, “b”, “hue”
-> It was fully explained about the L”, “a”, “b”, “hue”. as you recommended.
-line 257: organic not “orgnaic”
-> It was changed as you recommended in the manuscript.
Before publication manuscript should be checked for English language and style.
Thank you for your kind comments to improve this manuscript.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Dr Choi,
The paper entitled “Eco-physiological properties of open-field cucumbers responded to organic liquid fertilizers” by Jung and Choi reports scientific information on the effect of organic-farm derived liquid fertilizer on the agronomic performance of open-field cucumber and soil characteristics. The authors have determined the effects of various treatments of fertigation on cucumber. The topic is very interesting, in my opinion. I have appreciated the work of the authors and, in particular, how they conducted the soil chemical analysis, the bio-physical analysis, the plant nutrient analysis and the plant growth measurement. The experimental design was appropriate and statistical procedure was applied correctly. However, the authors carried out 1-year tests only and this represents the main problem of this manuscript.
The authors should convincingly explain why they conducted the tests for 1 year only and did not repeat them over the time. There are many points which I would like to see improved and a series of small punctuation points to revise before the possible publication. Moreover, I recommend the authors to make corrections in the test due to fact some words are not correctly written.
Lines 6-18: the abstract is too long. Furthermore, the number of the words is higher than those recommended by the journal. I suggest the authors to reduce the abstract and highlight briefly the novelty of their work.
Lines 45-47: in the Materials and Methods, the main information on climate variables such as temperature and rainfall should be include in the Results. Please, specify how these variables were determined. I suggest the authors to describe the type of meteorological station which they used to collect weather data and the main methods of soil analysis.
Line 54: the authors should highlight how long the tests were carried out. In the manuscript, it seems that all tests were 1-year tests. Is that so? This could be a major problem. Why did not the authors repeat the trials over the time? This is an open-field experiment and the effects of climate and soil variables on agronomic parameters of cucumber could change over the time, changing the findings. I recommend the authors to take into consideration this part of the methodology trying to give a solution.
Lines 54-64: please, the size of the plot must be included in the information of the experimental design.
Lines 120-249: I recommend the authors to improve the discussion, adding recent references in the manuscript. The discussion is low consistent in each sub-section. It is important to highlight the novelty of their findings due to fact this work is very interesting. Furthermore, I would like to know what the authors found more with respect to previous studies in this field.
Line 261: please delete the reference in the conclusion section.
Author Response
Dear Dr Choi,
The paper entitled “Eco-physiological properties of open-field cucumbers responded to organic liquid fertilizers” by Jung and Choi reports scientific information on the effect of organic-farm derived liquid fertilizer on the agronomic performance of open-field cucumber and soil characteristics. The authors have determined the effects of various treatments of fertigation on cucumber. The topic is very interesting, in my opinion. I have appreciated the work of the authors and, in particular, how they conducted the soil chemical analysis, the bio-physical analysis, the plant nutrient analysis and the plant growth measurement. The experimental design was appropriate and statistical procedure was applied correctly. However, the authors carried out 1-year tests only and this represents the main problem of this manuscript.
The authors should convincingly explain why they conducted the tests for 1 year only and did not repeat them over the time. There are many points which I would like to see improved and a series of small punctuation points to revise before the possible publication. Moreover, I recommend the authors to make corrections in the test due to fact some words are not correctly written.
-> This experiment was two-year experiment; first year was conducted with cherry tomato fertigating with same LF, same plot, same area, which were repeatedly used in this experiment. The treatment plot was fertigated with 100 times of all LF in the first year (2019), while the treatment plot was fertigated with equated rates equivalent to approximately 0.16 g of actual N of each LF per plant in the second year (2020). Also, this year (2020) was included the treatment plot of LNT to compare the other LF for soil environments and plant growth. Please see the lines 60-63 and lines 79-80.
The results of the first year study was alreay published in a jouranl (Choi, H.S. Effects of organic liquid fertilizers on biological activities and fruit productivity in open-field tomato. Braganitia 2020, 79, 447–457.) -> please see the Reference 10.
Lines 6-18: the abstract is too long. Furthermore, the number of the words is higher than those recommended by the journal. I suggest the authors to reduce the abstract and highlight briefly the novelty of their work.
-> The abstract was reduced to present the novelty of this work.
Lines 45-47: in the Materials and Methods, the main information on climate variables such as temperature and rainfall should be include in the Results. Please, specify how these variables were determined. I suggest the authors to describe the type of meteorological station which they used to collect weather data and the main methods of soil analysis.
-> Climate variables such as temperature and rainfall moved into the Results as you recommended in the manuscript. Also, the type of meteorological station which we used to collect weather data and the main methods of soil analysis was obtained from the Korea Meteorological Administration. Please see the lines 65-66.
Line 54: the authors should highlight how long the tests were carried out. In the manuscript, it seems that all tests were 1-year tests. Is that so? This could be a major problem. Why did not the authors repeat the trials over the time? This is an open-field experiment and the effects of climate and soil variables on agronomic parameters of cucumber could change over the time, changing the findings. I recommend the authors to take into consideration this part of the methodology trying to give a solution.
-> I answered for your previous request from you in the above. Also, I described in the conclusion section about your comments of the 1-year tests, the methodology trying to give a solution. Please see the lines 330-333.
Lines 54-64: please, the size of the plot must be included in the information of the experimental design.
-> The information of the size of the plot was described in the line 90.
Lines 120-249: I recommend the authors to improve the discussion, adding recent references in the manuscript. The discussion is low consistent in each sub-section. It is important to highlight the novelty of their findings due to fact this work is very interesting. Furthermore, I would like to know what the authors found more with respect to previous studies in this field.
-> The abstract was reduced to present the novelty of this work, and the conclusion was reorganized and revised based on your comments, the methodology trying to give a solution.
Line 261: please delete the reference in the conclusion section.
-> The reference was deleted and moved into the discussion section. Please see the lines 312-316.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I confirm that Authors revised the manuscript and I am completely satisfied with the changes made and with the new version of the manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
I am satisfied by the work that the authors have carried out. They have solved all the parts of the comments I made in the first review. I believe that their paper could accepted in the present form for publication in Sustainability.
No further comments to the authors.
