Inoculation of Prickly Pear Litter with Microbial Agents Promotes the Efficiency in Aerobic Composting

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General
-Writing require a revision because it is very in report style, full of statements with few connections
-Use of English is not always well employed

Abstract
-Treatments code names are meaningless in abstract because we don't know what they consist of
-Control should not be named CK, it could be confused with the generally accepted shortage for cytokinins. Better use 'Mock' or just 'control'
-Rebuild the abstract is required because is mostly a plain report of results. Abstract should be self-explanatory and concise

Intro
-Connecting phrases helps a lot the reader and make the story clearer
-Here you need to make connection between the concepts, because like this just seems a series of statements with few connections
-Content is right, but really requires a more connected structure
-Check the last paragraph, some errors in grammatical and some reiterative concepts

Material and Methods
-Again, avoid using CK as control because it is coincident with the use of cytokinins. Is not correct
-This section requires a full use of English review. Most of the concepts are messy or reiterative through this section
-In 'Treatment and sample collection' description of different treatments could be confusing and reiterative like this. Strains in each treatment could be explained in a table to facilitate reading
-"in a certain time." is a very vague expression, we need better indications for reproducibility
-"according to methods" is not enough

Results
-In Microbial composition of decomposition agent, not indicated how viable bacteria were counted
-Results on 'Microbial composition of decomposition agent' section should be better ordered in the graphic to facilitate visualization and interpretation. Only include in text differentially present by treatment and main populations in each one, just indicated number of OTUS, but not which of them-
-In Effects of microbial agents on seed germination index, review statement about differences in treatments, author indicates AC is different to BC and CC in graph. This section could be particularly confusing

Figures
-Resolution of many figures is low, please enhance to facilitate interpretation

Discussion
-Again, need to connect the concept and avoid reiterative statements
-pH as microbiota defining factor should be better referenced. It's well-known that this is a critical factor, but not a reference was included
-"CO2 and H2O, and cellulose and lignin were degraded to glucose", this statement would require an in vitro test to be assessed as authors do
-In general, this section is excessively large, so authors can fall into some interpretation fails, unnecessary information and reiterative statements. I recommend shortcutting following mains of this work: microbial diversity enhance composting process

Conclusion
-Not a 'Conclusions' section?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper investigates the effects of three agents on the aerobic composting process of prickly pear litter by measuring and comparing the physicochemical and microbial properties of control sample (litter (branches and leaves) collected from a Rosa roxburghii Tratt plantation mixed with the dry chicken feces) and analyzed samples with added agents .

The experiment is well designed and set up.

Methods of analysis of physico-chemical characteristics of the samples, high-throughput sequencing, biological information processing and statistical analysis are clearly and in sufficient detail explained.

All the parameters needed to assess the quality of the compost were monitored.

The results were clearly and thoroughly analyzed.

In my opinion, the chapter Conclusion is missing. The last paragraph of the paper should be part of that chapter. Also, I expect you to emphasize the importance of your analysis in this section, to give a few sentences about what the goal of the paper was and whether you achieved it.

In the manuscript, I have marked in yellow some parts to which I have remarks given in the text below:

 

• “The land area of R. roxburghii plantation in Guizhou has reached 133,000 hm²… “- surface units
• “Compost contains nutrients such as carbon, N, P and K,… “- Unify, or just chemical symbols or full element names
• “we asked the following questions: … “- Uppercase letter
• “The litter and check feces… “- chicken feces
• “… and the samples were collected once 5 days.”- …and samples were collected at 5-day intervals
• “A 5 g fresh samples were added in distilled water with the ratio of 1:10 and shaken at 180 r/min for 2 h. The resultant liquid was centrifuged at 10000 r/min for 5 min. The filtered extract was stored at 4°C for determination.” - Explain what you are determining in this way
• “The contents of organic matter, total N content, total P, total K content, Alkaline N content, available P, available K were determined according to methods” - described in the available literature or described in the paper? Complete the sentence.
• Based on OTU abundance table, richness, Chao1, Shannon, Simpson diversity index and Rarefaction curve were calculated using arch-alpha_div… - Explain in a few sentences the meaning of these indexes.
• Please present the results shown in Figure 5 A in a different way to make them more representative.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf