Long-Term No-Tillage and Straw Retention Management Enhances Soil Bacterial Community Diversity and Soil Properties in Southern China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The submitted article titled "Long-term management of zero tillage and retention enhances bacterial diversity of soil and soil in southern China" is eligible for publication in the journal Agronomy. Minor comments and suggestions were noted in the manuscript (attachment). General remarks below: 1. The terms used in the article must be precise. They should relate directly to the scope and methodology of the research, e.g. title, abstract, highlights, table and figure captions. 2. highlights - not necessary in the Agronomy journal 3. Introduction - can be supplemented with the method of conservation tillage - zonal tillage / strip-till. 4. Materials and methods Include information about the diversity indexes ... (Shannon, Simpson ...) 5. Results The description of the results must be fully consistent with the statistical analysis. Figures 2 and 3 do not have to describe tillage treatments. What does (c) in figure 4 mean? 6. References The References list does not fully follow Agronomy's guidelines 7. Read the entire article carefully and remove editing defects.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer 1

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The submitted article titled "Long-term management of zero tillage and retention enhances bacterial diversity of soil and soil in southern China" is eligible for publication in the journal Agronomy. Minor comments and suggestions were noted in the manuscript (attachment). General remarks below: 1. The terms used in the article must be precise. They should relate directly to the scope and methodology of the research, e.g. title, abstract, highlights, table, and figure captions. 2. highlights - not necessary in the Agronomy journal 3. Introduction - can be supplemented with the method of conservation tillage - zonal tillage / strip-till. 4. Materials and methods Include information about the diversity indexes ... (Shannon, Simpson ...) 5. Results The description of the results must be fully consistent with the statistical analysis. Figures 2 and 3 do not have to describe tillage treatments. What does (c) in figure 4 mean? 6. References The References list does not fully follow Agronomy's guidelines 7. Read the entire article carefully and remove editing defects.

General remarks: 1, 2, 3 & 5

Response: Thank you very much for your valuable comments and suggestions. We have revised our manuscript as you suggested in the revised MS. Further, in the revised version, we wrote in detail the method of conservation tillage.

4

We included information regarding the diversity indexes of Shannon and Simpson in section Materials and methods in the revised MS. 

Figures 2 and 3 do not have to describe tillage treatments

Response: Figures 2 and 3 describe the dominant soil bacterial community at different soil depths. It shows the general tendency of the bacterial community in soil. Therefore, no need to mention treatment detail. In figure 4 (c) written by mistake. We have deleted in the revised MS.

6 & 7

 Response: thank you so much for your suggestion. We have revised the MS carefully and correct all the references according to the Journal guideline. We hope that the correction we have made will be enough for possible publication.

Reviewer 2 Report

This research paper reports on a very comprehensive study of the influences of tillage and organic residue return to the soil on the soil bacterial community--as well as many related parameters.   It was well-planned, well-implemented, and well-written. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This research paper reports on a very comprehensive study of the influences of tillage and organic residue return to the soil on the soil bacterial community as well as many related parameters.   It was well-planned, well-implemented, and well-written.

Response:

Thank you very much for your appreciation of our study. We hope that the correction we have made will be enough for possible publication.