The Integration of Phosphorus-Solubilizing Rhizobacteria, Eisenia fetida and Phosphorus Rock Improves the Availability of Assimilable Phosphorus in the Vermicompost
, Jorge Sáenz-Mata *, Jesús Josafath Quezada-Rivera *, Rubén Palacio-RodrÃguez and Gisela Muro-PérezRound 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential of phosphate-solubilizing bacteria in improving the degradation and release of nutrients from phosphate rocks in vermicompost based on horse manure as an opportunity for its use as an organic fertilizer fortified with soluble phosphorus.
I believe that the work requires substantial changes and many corrections and is not suitable for publication in its current version.
Detailed remarks:
1. H2PO4 – there is no such acid. What is the valency of phosphorus in this case?
2. Lines 122-123 – names: electrical conductivity, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, soluble phosphorus should be written in lower case letters.
3. No characteristics of phosphate rock.
4. No horse manure characteristics.
5. Formulas of nitrate and ammonium should be written in ionic form.
6. Lines 284-285 “Phosphorus assimilated by plants occurs as two inorganic molecules, dihydrogen phosphate (H2PO4) and hydrogen phosphate (HPO4)”. There are no such compounds. What is the valence of phosphorus in them.
7. No specific discussion of results. Which fertilizer variant is the best according to the authors???
8. The conclusions must be reworded. They must contain specific and most important information because in their current form they are too general. Please use the impersonal form.
9. Lines 322-323 - “The treatments where phosphate rock and bacterial consortia were added obtained high values of H2PO4.” – this sentence is not clear. Did you mean orthophosphoric acid H3PO4?
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThe entire text must be edited linguistically. The impersonal form must be used.
Author Response
Please see attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear colleagues,
I am currently reviewing your manuscript titled "The integration of PGPR, Eisenia fetida and Phosphorus Rock improves the availability of assimilable phosphorus in the vemicompost", which is dealing with evaluating the interactions interaction between different factors to produce an organic fertilizer fortified with phosphorus. The study is experimental and
I think that this work can be published in the journal after some revision.
My comments are below:
Line 22: "...Optimal for the development and growth of crops..."This sentence is out of the logical sequence of the text. Please rewrite the abstract accordingly
Results section: I like that you present numerous graphs and figures, however I miss a description of them, please consider adding some descriptive paragraphs explaining you results. In the present form, results are described poorly and additional exlanations are needed.
Discussion section: Discussion is quite comprehensive, however I think combining Results&Discussion will be better for readers' understanding of your manuscript. Please consider combining these chapters into one.
Line 231: comma is needed after "However..."
Line 263, 268: please avoid citation (references) over-kill in one sentence.
Conclusions chapter: conclusive part of this work is quite poor, I would be pleased to see more integrative assessment of your results as well as disscussion of possible application of the results. You do have important results of your experiment that can be better explained and apllied for practical use needs. So, for me stating "further research is needed..." and this kind of phrases is not fair to yourself and your efforts towards finishing this experimental research. My suggestion would be to rewrite the Conclusions part to highlight the importance of your research via the prism of findings and practical applications.
I believe that after finishing a revision of the manuscript, it would be worth publishing in the journal.
Best wishes to the authors
Please consider using English editing service or approaching some native-speaker person to check the language.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors1. The abbreviation in the title (PGPR) may not be understood by the readership as it is not a common abbreviation. You may want to consider replacing this abbreviation.
2. Figure 3 is better moved to supplementary materials.
3. Was the physicochemical analysis of the samples carried out at the zero point, i.e. at the very beginning of the experiment? Please provide these results in the text. Since it is not clear whether any changes occurred in 30 days or not.
4. It would also be worthwhile to add a control sample with only Phosphorous Rock applied without microorganisms or worms to see how the native microbiome would handle the biotransformation of the compounds.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe text has been significantly improved in line with the guidelines, but some changes still need to be made:
1. A language correction should still be made, e.g. the title says "vemicompost" instead of "vermicompost".
2. Please check the units in the text and standardize them, some notations are incorrect, e.g. 50 g/kg can still be written as 50 g ∙kg -1, but the notation 50 g/kg-1 is incorrect.
Please correct this notation in the entire text, including tables.
3. The authors have added information about phosphate rock to the text, however, it would be necessary to include data on the phosphorus content because this is the component of phosphate rock that interests us the most.
4. Please write nitrate and ammonium ions in Figure 3 appropriately, i.e. the same notation as in Table 3, i.e. in ionic form with the appropriate electrical charge.
5. In response to my first and sixth remarks, the authors gave an incorrect answer but correctly introduced changes to the text. Phosphorus in orthophosphates occurs in the +5 oxidation state. There is no such ion as (H2PO4)-2, because oxygen occurs in the -2 oxidation state (-2 x 4 = -8), phosphorus has a +5 oxidation state and hydrogen has a +1 oxidation state (+1 x 2 = 2): in total we have -8 +5 + 2 = -1. After adding up the charge was -1 so the notation should be H2PO4-1.
There is no H3PO4-1 (hydrogen: +1 x 3 = 3, phosphorus: +5 x 1 = 5, oxygen: -2 x 4 = 8). After adding up we get zero so this is a neutral molecule H3PO4, i.e. orthophosphoric acid.
In the case of HPO4, the notation HPO4-2 should be used, but the notation HPO4 cannot be used because it is not a neutral molecule but an ion, or rather an anion, so the ion charge should always be entered.
The answer included a publication where the formulas are written correctly, but in the answers the authors incorrectly provide the notations, although in the text the notations are now correct.
6. Lines 300 – 302: The Authors write: “Phosphorus assimilated by plants occurs as two inorganic molecules, dihydrogen phosphate (H2PO4) -1 and hydrogen phosphate (HPO4)-2 “.
I suggest you write down:
“Phosphorus assimilated by plants occurs in the form of dihydrogen phosphate H2PO4-1 and hydrogen phosphate HPO4-2 “. (The brackets are unnecessary).
A molecule is an electrically neutral group of two or more atoms. An ion is an atom or group of atoms connected by chemical bonds that has a deficiency or excess of electrons in relation to protons. Electrically neutral atoms and molecules of chemical compounds have an equal number of electrons and protons, while ions are electrically charged positively or negatively.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThe text still needs to be checked because there are grammatical errors: for example, the title says "vemicompost".
Author Response
Please see attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear colleagues,
Thank you very much for revising your manuscript. In my understanding all the comments were addressed, comprehensive rewriting of the text were done (according to reviewers' suggestions).
Thank you and good luck with further publications.
Please double-check in proofreadings all the typos may still occur in the manuscript.
Author Response
Please see attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for the corrections made to the manuscript.
Author Response
Please see attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
