Establishment and Application of Critical Nitrogen Dilution Curve for Rice Based on Leaf Dry Matter

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article bring new references for the Nitrogen Index. It has a potentially high interest for field operators (advisors, farmers...). There are no Research novelty, but it provides interesting data about rice growth. The limits of the resultas are well stated (dependance on climate characteristics).

The articler is easy to read.

The introduction has a confusing paragraph about the scale at which measurments have to be performed. It stress the importance to work at the leaves scale; however, all the measurements are performed at the shoot scale.

Amthough the establishment of the INN curves may be well known, I suggest that the authors draw the way they estimate the INN curve, this would be a usefull reminder as well as a pedagogic input for those readers who discover the method.

I finally think that the article would improve from a Research point of view if the authors created a table or a graph preseneting many (all?) other INN data gathered on the rice. This would definitively give to the article a more global interest, as it does not bring any special originality in the approach.

I underlined some small spelling issues in the text itself, and all may remarks are also underlined.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

        Thank you greatly for your letter and comments for “Establishment and application of critical nitrogen dilution curve for rice based on leaf dry matter"(agronomy-722232). Those comments are valuable for improving our manuscript, as well as very helpful for our research. We have thoroughly revised the manuscript according to your comments. And the revised portions are marked in red. We hope the new manuscript will satisfy you. The specific responses to the your comments are as follows.

Please see the attachment.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

It is an interesting subject figuring out the relationship between nitrogen level in plant and dry matter. However, this manuscript is not recommended for publication in current form. Please look over it carefully and gently recommend to consider reviewing this manuscript. Gently recommend the authors to take English proofreading.

1. For readers, please explain the abbreviations when they come first except abstract, for example “NNI”, “NRMSE”, etc.)
2. In manuscript: correct “forSongjing9” to “for Songing9”, there are too many uncorrected spacing words.
3. Line 48 : It looks like more references is needed if the authors claims can be supported reasonably that stress can cause change of biomass.
4. Line 15 : There is no right parenthese
5. Line 37 : “SPAD”, What is the “SPAD”?
6. Line 43 : “and was” un-corrected
7. Line 196: correct “RMSEof0.23 NRMSEof9.1%” to “RMSE of 0.23 NRMSE of 9.1%”
8. Line 197: correct “forSongjing9” to “for Songing9”
9. Line 198: “can therefore be”; Gently recommend, please move “therefore” into other place in the sentence.
10. Line 198: The Fig. 4 dosen' have good relationship but how come the data (Fig. 4) are used to diagnose?
11. Line 233: Where is the previous research results? Please proper show references

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

        Thank you greatly for your letter and comments for “Establishment and application of critical nitrogen dilution curve for rice based on leaf dry matter"(agronomy-722232). Those comments are valuable for improving our manuscript, as well as very helpful for our research. We have thoroughly revised the manuscript according to your comments. And the revised portions are marked in red. We hope the new manuscript will satisfy you. The specific responses to the your comments are as follows.

        Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Most of the remarks have been taken into account. This present version has been dramatically improved by the use of a wider literature review (i.e. Critical N indices table in Discussion) and a clearer presentation of the methods used.

Reviewer 2 Report

It looks like the authors gave an effort to follow the reviewer's comment and appreciate quickly respond to it.