Effect of Biochar Application and Mineral Fertilization on Biomass Production and Structural Carbohydrate Content in Forage Plant Mixture
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Reviewer comments for MDPI Journal Sustainability
Article title: Effect of biochar application and mineral fertilizationon3 biomass production and structural carbohydratecontentin4 forage plant mixture.
The article talks about the effect of two independent factors (NPK and biochar) in different dosage on biomass yield of grass mixture in pot experiments. It is well written and informative. Nevertheless, some extent of revision (in my humble opinion) is required to increase the quality and scientific value of the manuscript before being published.
General comments
The study claims that there are obvious benefits of adding biochar together with NPK to increase biomass productivity and quality of grass. What obviously lacks is any kind of economic discussion. Is this economically feasible?
For example: What are the costs of adding 55 kg NPK/ha plus 2-6 t/ha of biochar and are these costs justified by the added value of overproduced biomass.
Please add short paragraph about economic assessment of this kind to the discussion chapter.
Line by line comments
Line 28: Please replace ap-plication by application
Line 102: Please replace deter-gent by detergent
Line 109 – 110: Please rephrase sentence: From a review of the available literature… as it sounds confusing
Line 115-116: Sentence: Biochar can possibly help reduce chemical fertilizer requirements to some extent is the very important hypothesis. The findings of this article support it or deny? If it is non-conclusive please remove. Otherwise, please, state clearly in discussion chapter if your findings support it.
Lines 175 – 176: Please separate numerical value from the mass unit
Line 219-230: Statistics. You only explain tests if data normality and homogeneity is confirmed. Does that mean that all gathered biological data from these experiments followed normal distribution? No data sample was ever non normally distributed so you would have to use non parametrical tests? Please explain.
Line 298: Table 5: Please add in the table legend clearly what the numbers a, b, ab and c stand for (which significant difference etc.) instead of just adding Means with the same letter do not differ significantly at p<0.05 in Tukey’s HSDtest.> at the bottom.
Line 334: Figure 4: Please expand figure legend to be more informative and explain the simbols in the figure for the readers that look at the figures first. Do that for all figures and the tables where applicable.
Line 523-529: In this paragraph you discuss scientific aims of the study and the state of the current research. Please state clearly novelty of your research, for example using phrase like: This is the first study that uses …. The novelty state lacks in the document.
Line 568-569: This sentence seems to discuss results from the reference num 56 although it is not clear. If this is the case, please change it to According to the authors [56], the biochar alone did not increase crop yield regardless of the control.
Line 621 and after: The study claims that there are obvious benefits of adding biochar together with NPK to increase biomass productivity and quality of grass. What obviously lacks is any kind of economic discussion. Is this economically feasible?
For example: What are the costs of adding 55 kg NPK/ha plus 2-6 Mg/ha of biochar and are these costs justified by the added value of overproduced biomass. Current high prices of chemical fertilizers require such evaluation.
Please add short paragraph about economic assessment of this kind to the discussion chapter.
Author Response
Dear Respected Reviewer,
Thank you for your effort involved in preparing the review of our manuscript entitled:
“Effect of biochar application and mineral fertilization on biomass production and structural carbohydrate content in forage plant mixture”. We have studied the comments carefully and made the correction in the text of manuscript.
Point 1.
General comments: The study claims that there are obvious benefits of adding biochar together with NPK to increase biomass productivity and quality of grass. What obviously lacks is any kind of economic discussion. Is this economically feasible?
For example: What are the costs of adding 55 kg NPK/ha plus 2-6 t/ha of biochar and are these costs justified by the added value of overproduced biomass.
Please add short paragraph about economic assessment of this kind to the discussion chapter.
Response: Thank you for your comment relating to the economic effect of applying biochar on biomass production. We agree that this aspect is very important, however, the scope of this manuscript did not cover this issue. The economic aspect will be the subject of a next paper which is planned after the whole research cycle. As suggested, a short paragraph on the economic aspect of biochar use has been added to the discussion chapter.
Line by line comments:
Point 2. Line 28: Please replace ap-plication by application
Response: Thank you for your comment. It was corrected.
Point 3. Line 102: Please replace deter-gent by detergent
Response: Thank you for your comment. It was corrected.
Point 4. Line 109 – 110: Please rephrase sentence: From a review of the available literature… as it sounds confusing
Response: Thank you for your comment. The sentence was changed: A review of the available literature shows that…
Point 5. Line 115-116: Sentence: Biochar can possibly help reduce chemical fertilizer requirements to some extent is the very important hypothesis. The findings of this article support it or deny? If it is non-conclusive please remove. Otherwise, please, state clearly in discussion chapter if your findings support it.
Response: Thank you for your comment It was corrected. Sentence was removed.
Point 7. Lines 175 – 176: Please separate numerical value from the mass unit
Response: Thank you for your comment. It was corrected.
Point 8. Line 219-230: Statistics. You only explain tests if data normality and homogeneity is confirmed. Does that mean that all gathered biological data from these experiments followed normal distribution? No data sample was ever non normally distributed so you would have to use non parametrical tests? Please explain.
Response: Thank you for your comment. All data from our experiment had normal distribution and this information was added.
Point 9. Line 298: Table 5: Please add in the table legend clearly what the numbers a, b, ab and c stand for (which significant difference etc.) instead of just adding Means with the same letter do not differ significantly at p<0.05 in Tukey’s HSDtest.> at the bottom.
Response: Thank you for your comment. The following sentence was added: a, b, c - the values with different superscript letters in a column are significantly different (p<0.05)
Point 10. Line 334: Figure 4: Please expand figure legend to be more informative and explain the simbols in the figure for the readers that look at the figures first. Do that for all figures and the tables where applicable.
Response: Thank you for your comment. It was corrected.
Point 11. Line 523-529: In this paragraph you discuss scientific aims of the study and the state of the current research. Please state clearly novelty of your research, for example using phrase like: This is the first study that uses …. The novelty state lacks in the document.
Response: Thank you for your comment. The following sentence was added: The aim of these studies was to assess the effect of biochar on soil parameters. This is the first study aimed to evaluate the effect of different biochar application rates alone and in combination with low and high NPK fertilizer dosages on yield and structural carbohydrate content in the dry biomass of a grass-legume mixture.
Point 12. Line 568-569: This sentence seems to discuss results from the reference num 56 although it is not clear. If this is the case, please change it to According to the authors [56], the biochar alone did not increase crop yield regardless of the control.
Response: Thank you for your comment. The sentence has been changed.
Point 13. Line 621 and after: The study claims that there are obvious benefits of adding biochar together with NPK to increase biomass productivity and quality of grass. What obviously lacks is any kind of economic discussion. Is this economically feasible?
For example: What are the costs of adding 55 kg NPK/ha plus 2-6 Mg/ha of biochar and are these costs justified by the added value of overproduced biomass. Current high prices of chemical fertilizers require such evaluation.
Please add short paragraph about economic assessment of this kind to the discussion chapter.
Response: The response to this comment has already been included in the point 1.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors, the present work was interesting; however, before this manuscript can be considered for publication, drastic revisions should be made based on the following concerns raised by the reviewer:
1. Abstract: The first part of the abstract should strengthen the limitations of the previous work and put forward the innovations of the present work. The last sentence concerning further studies should be moved to the end of the discussion part and should be deleted from abstract.
2. Line 14: Please provide the full name of NPK when they were firstly mentioned.
3. Materials and methos: I failed to see any literatures cited in this part.
3. Results:
3.1 All of the tables in the manuscript should be 3-line tables. Please revise these tables properly.
3.2 Line 175-179: There should be a space between number and unit, such as "0.35 g". Please double check and revise these mistakes throughout the whole manuscript.
3.3 Line 277 and 316: There are two figures named Figure 3. Please double check the number of the figures.
3.4 Line 277: In this Figure 3, the color of the figure legend "precipitation 2021" was wrong, it should be purple instead of yellow.
3.5 Line 300: "P<0.05" where "P" should be italic. Please revise this mistake in the whole manuscript.
3.6 Line 334: The numbers such as 10, 48, 16, and 69 in Figure 4 were so confused, where are the decimal points? These numbers were useless and error bars as well as lowercase letters indicate significance should be added instead.
3.7 One of my biggest concerns were the figures. These figures either lack of error bars or lowercase letters. The authors should uniform the styles of these figures and tables. The figures were too large and tedious, some figures should be combined or put to supplemental data of the manuscript.
3.8 Line 516: Full name of RFV should be shown in Y-axis of the figure.
4. The present work determined many physiological parameters whereas the most important parameter was not clear. It is suggested that the authors make a PCA analysis or RDA analysis to clarify which parameter play central roles in improving the yield and quality of the forage crop species.
The English language was poor, many grammar mistakes have been detected. The whole manuscript should be revised by native English speakers.
Author Response
Dear Respected Reviewer,
Thank you for your effort involved in preparing the review of our manuscript entitled:
“Effect of biochar application and mineral fertilization on biomass production and structural carbohydrate content in forage plant mixture”. We have studied the comments carefully and made the correction in the text of manuscript.
Point 1. Abstract: The first part of the abstract should strengthen the limitations of the previous work and put forward the innovations of the present work. The last sentence concerning further studies should be moved to the end of the discussion part and should be deleted from abstract.
Response: Thank you for your comment. The first part of the abstract was changed. The last sentence regarding further research was removed from the abstract and moved to the discussion section.
Point 2. Line 14: Please provide the full name of NPK when they were firstly mentioned.
Response: Thank you for your comment. It was corrected.
Point 3. Materials and methods: I failed to see any literatures cited in this part.
Response: Thank you for your comment In the M&M section, the references concerning DDM, DMI, RFV were supplemented.
Point 3. Results:
Point 3.1 All of the tables in the manuscript should be 3-line tables. Please revise these tables properly.
Response: Thank you for your comment. It was corrected.
Point 3.2 Line 175-179: There should be a space between number and unit, such as "0.35 g". Please double check and revise these mistakes throughout the whole manuscript.
Response: Thank you for your comment. It was corrected.
Point 3.3 Line 277 and 316: There are two figures named Figure 3. Please double check the number of the figures.
Response: Thank you for your comment. It was corrected.
Point 3.4 Line 277: In this Figure 3, the color of the figure legend "precipitation 2021" was wrong, it should be purple instead of yellow.
Response: Thank you for your comment. It was corrected.
Point 3.5 Line 300: "P<0.05" where "P" should be italic. Please revise this mistake in the whole manuscript.
Response: Thank you for your comment. It was corrected in the whole manuscript.
Point 3.6 Line 334: The numbers such as 10, 48, 16, and 69 in Figure 4 were so confused, where are the decimal points? These numbers were useless and error bars as well as lowercase letters indicate significance should be added instead.
Response: Thank you for your comment. This figure has been removed because the data shown in the figure is given in the text found in lines 368-380.
Point 3.7 One of my biggest concerns were the figures. These figures either lack of error bars or lowercase letters. The authors should uniform the styles of these figures and tables. The figures were too large and tedious, some figures should be combined or put to supplemental data of the manuscript.
Response: Thank you for your comment. The figures have been corrected.
Point 3.8 Line 516: Full name of RFV should be shown in Y-axis of the figure.
Response: Thank you for your comment. It was corrected.
Point 4. The present work determined many physiological parameters whereas the most important parameter was not clear. It is suggested that the authors make a PCA analysis or RDA analysis to clarify which parameter play central roles in improving the yield and quality of the forage crop species.
Response: Thank you for your comment. PCA analysis was made and the results were presented in the manuscript.
Point 5. Comments on the Quality of English Language
The English language was poor, many grammar mistakes have been detected. The whole manuscript should be revised by native English speakers.
Response: Thank you for your comment. The English language has been improved.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I have no additional comments. I suggest accepting the manuscript in this new revised form.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors, thank you for your revisions. I suggest that this paper can be accepted for publication under such circumstance.
