Effects of Biochar Application on Tomato Yield and Fruit Quality: A Meta-Analysis
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authorscomments attached
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsReview comment on “Effects of Biochar application on tomato yield and fruit quality: A meta-analysis”
General comment:
While this meta-analysis provides a comprehensive overview of biochar effects on tomato yield and quality, it lacks the depth and specificity of primary field research. The aggregation of diverse studies may obscure important nuances in experimental conditions and local factors that influence biochar efficacy. However, the paper does offer some valuable insights into general trends and factors affecting biochar performance in tomato cultivation. I think the research is not good enough for the field work.
Specific comments:
1. The study would benefit from including at least one small-scale field experiment to validate key findings from the meta-analysis and provide more concrete, context-specific data.
2. The authors should more clearly acknowledge the limitations of meta-analysis in capturing the complexities of field conditions and soil-biochar interactions.
3. The paper could be strengthened by a more in-depth discussion of the mechanisms behind biochar's effects, rather than primarily focusing on statistical outcomes.
4. The study lacks information on biochar's long-term effects and potential negative impacts, which are crucial for practical applications.
5. More attention should be given to the economic feasibility of biochar application at different rates, as this is critical for real-world adoption.
6. The authors should consider including case studies or examples from specific regions to illustrate how biochar effects can vary under different environmental conditions.
7. The paper would benefit from a more detailed exploration of how biochar interacts with other agricultural practices (e.g., fertilization, irrigation) in affecting tomato yield and quality.
8. The authors should provide more guidance on how farmers and researchers can translate these meta-analysis findings into actionable field practices.
9. The study could be improved by incorporating more recent primary research studies that may not have been included in the meta-analysis dataset.
10. The paper should more explicitly address the need for future field studies to fill specific knowledge gaps identified through this meta-analysis.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis manuscript focused on the effects of biochar application based on meta-analysis, which was proposed on tomato yield. In my opinion, the paper is sound and interesting. The running text was also well organized and well writting. However, I believe there is still some minor adjustments should be covered before publication. My comments are listed as follows:
1. Carefully check the formatting issue according to the journal, the alignment of the first paragraph in the introduction is inconsistent with other parts.
2. Data Collection part, too many bullets were listed. I suggest to merge them into one paragraph.
3. Enlarge the font size in the image, especially for Figure 1, not clear at all.
4. Add an image of the research area and distribution of sampling points.
5. Update the literature list, and in the introduction, more recent literature should be cited to explain the research significance and purpose.
6. The discussion section should also conduct in-depth analysis of the results from the perspective of recent researches.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsIt looks better. But I am not sure if this research is suitable for Sustainability. We may need a field and real experiment.
Author Response
Comments and Suggestions for Authors：It looks better. But I am not sure if this research is suitable for Sustainability. We may need a field and real experiment.
Reply：We greatly appreciate the thorough review and insightful comments you have provided on our manuscript. The primary intent of this paper is to provide a systematic summary and analysis of existing literature. We recognize that individual field experiments can be influenced by a variety of factors, leading to heterogeneity in results. Therefore, we opted for a meta-analysis approach to synthesize data from multiple studies, uncover the sources of heterogeneity, and analyze the effects of biochar on tomatoes from a more comprehensive perspective. We believe that this method helps reveal general patterns and potential variables in the application of biochar. We wholeheartedly agree with your point about the significance of field experiments. In this revision, we have emphasized the importance of field tests in the discussion section（highlighted in red） and called on future researchers to validate our findings through field experiments. We believe that it is essential to conduct a variety of trials under different conditions rather than relying on a single experiment to validate the conclusions of this meta-analysis. We hope that through a broader range of experiments, the findings from our meta-analysis can be more robustly confirmed and better contextualized within real-world agricultural settings.
