Plant Nutrition under Climate Change and Soil Carbon Sequestration

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I evaluate that the revised manuscript is improved well by focusing on plant nutrition furthermore, particularly in the soil section.
I would like to request to modify parts as follows.
(1) Please indicate the abbreviation correctly.
L73  SOCseq => soil carbon sequestration (SCseq)
L74  SOCseq => SCseq
L80  soil carbon sequestration => SCseq
L175  SOM => soil organic matter (SOM)
L403  OC => organic carbon (OC)
L415  soil C sequestration => soil carbon sequestration
L476  Cseq => carbon sequestration
L476  soil Cseq => SCseq
L481  OM => organic matter (OM)
L498  soil C-sequestration => SCseq
L532  MB => microorganisms
L535  soil Cseq => SCseq
L564  SC => soil carbon
L592  Cseq => carbon sequestration
L605  POC => particulate organic carbon
L605  PON => particulate organic nitrogen
L615  SOCseq => SCseq
(2) Please make scientific name italic.
L149  (Zea mays) => (Zea mays)
L149  (Sorghum bicolor) => (Sorghum bicolor)
Table 1  (Oryza sativa) => (Oryza sativa)
(3) Please indicate the range correctly.
L350  1220-2000 => 1220 to 2000
L351  4661% => 46 to 61%
L571  0.40.9 => 0.4 to 0.9
L581  41 - 55 => 41 to 55
L583  30 - 50 => 30 to 50
L626  3040 => 24 to 40  (Lal, 2006 showed 23.78-39.48)
L629  1,2001,500 => 1200 to 1500
(4) Please consider term as follows.
L629  group => stock
(5) References
L850  Dynamics, 2006, 17(2) => Dynamics. Land Degrad. Develop., 2006, 17(2)
L896  407(1) => 407
(6) As you can see, please insert a space in the text in red.

Author Response

All comments were answered in the revised MS

thanks

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Seems that the authors added sections in the manuscript following the advice of other reviewer(s). These esctions need editing since in a lot of cases several words are not seperated by spaces.

A few editorial suggestions were made in the manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

all comments were ansewred in this cover letter

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This review contributes to advance understanding relationship between plant nutrition and soil C sequestration, especially based on elucidation of soil organic matter dynamics by many recent research papers published within 5 years.

I recommend to input "in soil" after ", and losing nutrients" in L21. Because readers can understand easily relationship between plant and soil.

There are very few points to be corrected, which is slight mistake.

L668: Delete "33."

L701: Delete "45."

L746: Delete "62."

Reviewer 2 Report

It is important to have a clear idea about the changes in nutrition of plants under changing climatic conditions for achieving SDGs. Authors have attempted to review current knowledge on impact of climate change and C-sequestration on plant nutrition. They have identified effects of changes in climatic/atmospheric variables such as CO2 concentration, temperature, and  rainfall on plant nutrition. They also tried to describe how increasing SOC stocks would increase nutrient availability in soil. They have reviewed recent publications, most of them were related to climate change and soil organic carbon stocks and concentrated their discussion mainly on nutrients available in soil organic matter. 

However, this review does not provide clear guidance to readers as to how climate change or C-sequestration will affect nutrition of the plant, either by changing their uptake by plants or by changing their availability in soil. However, they were successful to some extent, reviewing literature on changes in some aspects of biochemistry and physiology of plants resulted from C and N availability. 

This reviewer have identified following drawbacks in the article;

1. Lac of clear reasoning for this review by identifying how findings of this study could be benefited to the scientific community.
2. The discussion is largely limited to C and N nutrition of the plant. No review of literature on the effect of climate change or C-sequestration on other major plant nutrients, within the plant as well as in the soil.
3. It lacs information about any quantification of changes in nutrient uptake by plants under different climatic-soil-crop situations. Other than nutrients in soil organic matter, the dynamics of nutrients in soil can be vastly affected by climate change due to changes in biological activity, soil temperature, moisture regime etc. But these factors have not been discussed.
4. Also a significant deficiency is what specific management practices should be adopted to overcome problems identified, under different situations.
5. Failed to identify the gaps in our current knowledge on how climate change could affect plant nutrition (except some general discussion on C and N nutrition). This article does not identify future research needs as well.
6. The two figures in the paper is over-simplifying the more complex nature of the problem.  The only Table does not give clear guidance to the reader about the "how C-seq affects plant nutrition and soil quality".
7. The conclusions drawn are very general in nature and does not suggest any future directions

Other than the above, there were many sentences that does not provide a clear idea about the meaning or their idea appears to be errounus (Please see the attached text for details)

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

In this review, authors assembled 100 papers with the objective to ‘highlight the relationship of plant nutrition to climatic changes as well as relationship of soil carbon sequestration to plant nutrition’. Setting two targets is a confusing start. Setting a central topic and sub-topics would facilitate the reading through the paper. Sustainability, soil quality, soil degradation, and nutrient balance should be defined in the context addressed by authors.

The title suggest that plant nutrition is the central topic. The central topic is likely organic carbon impacted by soil degradation and climate change, and impacting plant nutrition. Apparently, each author provided their own literature reviews that were further assembled into a review paper, resulting in several repetitions of the same idea, unequal quality of the English, and loss of fluidity that make the reading difficult to follow.

Several statements lack support from literature (e.g., l. 41-42; 50-53; 61-63; 120-122; 159-167; 224-227; 240-247; 363-365; 375-380). Several words are misleading without definitions or quantification (e.g.,  l. 498; 505).

A large part of the paper is devoted to themes already well documented in textbooks and that could be eluded. Soil types and climatic regions are not addressed in enough detail although nutrient management should be site-specific (l. 117-122). 

Process-driven C sequestration and budget-related C accumulation are often confounded. There is little discussion on protection mechnisms for SOC. Little is provided on quantified targets for management practices applied to soil types and climatic conditions. Hence the read cannerot grasp realistic objectives for site-specific beneficial practices.  Moreover, the effect of C sequestration on pollution by organic carbon and both mineral and organic nitrogen is not discussed as a consequence of carbon accumulation in soils. Stoichiometry between C, N, P and S has been useful in the past but may site-specific under contrasting edaphic and climatic conditions.

Methodologies have been little discussed. The soil profile considered (0-0.20 m vs. 0-1 or 2 m layers), and the carbon quantification method (Walkley-Black, Dumas comsution, LOI, …) may vary considerably among studies and should be addressed in a review paper on C.

Figures and table are not as informative as authors would expect. Cycles and their relationships would be more informative. Tables could report on beneficial practices and their impact on C sequestration and nutrient balance. Conclusion looks like an introduction. This is because the review ‘highlighted’ rather than ‘addressed’ problems.

I suggest releasing the paper to the authors for further resubmission after considering the above comments.