Effect of Banana-Waste Biochar and Compost Mixtures on Growth Responses and Physiological Traits of Seashore Paspalum Subjected to Six Different Water Conditions
, Lalla Fatima Zohra Ainlhout 2, Zaina Idardare 3, Bouchaib Ihssane 4 and Laila Bouqbis 2,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The research is of interest from an R&D point of view as well as from a commercial point of view. It is interesting to address an investigation in an area of ​​almost immediate application. It is to recognize the experience and knowledge of the research group in the statistical area. This article deserves to be published. However, there are several points to improve, which will enrich the information that the authors are trying to disseminate.
1. First, it is worth reviewing the entire manuscript to avoid inadvertent mistakes such as mixing languages ​​or presenting incomplete ideas. In the case of language combination, I seemed to find a couple of points where French terms were used (eg page 2, lines 78, 85). Regarding incomplete ideas, the example is on page 5, line 176. Therefore, it is recommended to review the manuscript to correct these mistakes carefully.
2. In another aspect, scientific names must be written in italics. The correct thing is to write the Genus with the first letter in capital letters, while the species must be written all in lowercase. Thus, the correct way to indicate the plant's name studied in this research is: Paspalum vaginatum. Therefore, it is recommended to review and correct this aspect throughout the document.
On the other hand, the first time the scientific name of a plant is mentioned, it must be written in its entirety (genus and species), but in subsequent mentions only the abbreviation of the genus should be indicated, and the full name of the species must be mentioned.
In summary, in the first mention Paspalum vaginatum must be indicated, and in subsequent mentions it must be indicated as P. vaginatum. When you use the specific epithet: Paspalum vaginatum Swartz.
3. In general, it is recommended that a scientific article should be written formaly, in the third person; that is, avoiding the use of the property pronouns "my", "our", "we" and so on. For example, “our investigation”, “we compare”, “we measured” (page 2, lines 54, 57, 69, respectively). Therefore, it is recommended to review the entire manuscript and correct this matter.
4. On the other hand, regarding the congruence between methodology and results. The methods section indicates that XRD and FTIR carried out the physicochemical characterization of the banana biochar, and both the XRD pattern and the FTIR spectrum are presented. However, these characteristics are not strongly related to the results obtained. Something is mentioned regarding the presence of whewellite in the biochar, but the correlation is poor. I think you can get more out of those results.
In the case of the FTIR analysis, it is very unrelated; that is, if that analysis had not been presented, the discussion of the results would not change. It is recommended to correlate the results of the FTIR characterization with the response observed in the development of the plant. Alternatively, you can omit the FTIR characterization.
5. On the other hand, in the Discussion section, it is mentioned somethig about scanning electron microscopy analysis. However, neither the methods section nor the results section indicates that this analysis has been performed. Was SEM done?
6. More details are missing in the Figure 1. You should indicated what signals correspond to the whewellite and calcite phases.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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This has been corrected in the revised manuscript.
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This has been corrected in the revised manuscript.
3. To improve the quality of the manuscript, we edited several sentences and rectified some spelling and grammar issues, as indicated by the reviewer. Some sentences have been eliminated from the revised manuscript to give them the attention they deserve.
4. As recommended by the reviewer, we add some paragraphs to characterize the results of XRD and FTIR of the biochar to relate the results obtained with the development of the plant.
5. As recommended by the reviewer, we change the sentence, scanning electron microscopy was done in our previous work, it had been already published. In the present study, I have just mentioned the results of SEM of the same biochar banana waste biochar.
6. Indeed the reviewer is right; we correct the HKL of the XRD graph and we have indicated the signal for each phase in the revised manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The title of the manuscript “Effect of banana waste biochar and compost mixtures on growth responses and physiological traits of seashore paspa lum subjected to six different water conditions” is very good. This paper's topic is appropriate for this journal, and it should be published there. However, there are a few concerns that the author has to address before the article is completed.
- Why did the authors choose six water scarcity scenarios 100,80,60,25,20 in their study?
- For biochar XRD and FTIR characterization references (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biteb.2018.02.001; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biombioe.2018.10.006) could be added.
- To improve the paper's quality, the whole manuscript should be proofread.
Author Response
First, we want to thank Reviewer #2 for his/her positive reaction to the overall content of the review. We are also grateful for the remarks and constructive suggestions. Below is a point-by-point description of how we revised the manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Th paper is written on a relevant and rather interesting topic. The results obtained by the authors can be used in further studies. For example, to study the release and absorption of carbon dioxide in the conduct of the agricultural technique in question. Also, the results of the study can be used to make a decision on the choice of agricultural techniques for growing crops on poor and dehydrated soils in arid and semi-arid regions. The results described are easy to understand for a reader who is not a specialist in boiology.
Author Response
Thank you for your kind review.
