Effects on Crop Development, Yields and Chemical Composition of Celeriac (Apium graveolens L. var. rapaceum) Cultivated Underneath an Agrivoltaic System

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript entitled "Celeriac (Apium graveolens L. var. rapaceum) cultivated underneath an agrivoltaic system: Effects on crop development, yields, and chemical compounds".

I found the article well-crafted easy to follow. Authors have presented the study in an appropriate form and interesting to read---  

• Tile - I suggest reframing the tile as the authors have not conducted any analysis with the chemical compound ( No HPLC). No chemical compound profiling, therefore, the title must be changed accordingly ----
• Abstract – Authors in line no- 19 claimed that fresh bulb yield was not significantly affected under AV, later in the same line they claim under AV, fresh bulb yield was decreased in 2017 and increased in 2018. I suggest please reframe the two contradictory sentences in the same line.
• Introduction- No major and minor comments
• Methodology – Suggestions, Section 2.4- Chemical analysis--- As per the current description I understand authors performed mineral composition analysis of the samples and further can be said as chemical composition analysis included as protein, fiber, etc--- 
• I suggest authors have a separate section under 2.4, with subheadings under as Mineral analysis describing all mineral analysis and chemical composition --crude protein and fibers etc.  to another subheading

• Results and discussion - Similarly under result section 3.3 please separate the two sections as mentioned for methodology section 2. 4--
• Conclusions – No comments

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments:

The research topic deals with the agrivoltaic system, which is of high-interest, and the manuscript is definitely publishable. The statistical analysis is legit and solid. Just a minor issue, In some parts, the language of the manuscript is not following academic style (example: Line 15: In this study, we investigate its effect..., Line 45: This farm was chosen as, so far,  ). Please see some specific comments below.

 

Title:

Please consider rewording the title in a way that it represents the objective section first. For example Effects of xxx and yyy on crop development, yield, and chemical compounds.

 

Abstract:

The abstract provides a clear overview and summary of the research, however the last statement “we conclude that celeriac appears to be a suitable crop for cultivation under AV” does not have a scientific tone. I would suggest adding some value/number here that defines a weight for the term “appear”. Based on the abstract, the hypothesis of this research is that under AV system, the cultivation of celeriac will lead to a higher yield (and probably other yield components). The objective statement in the abstract (line15-16) however does not represent this hypothesis. In fact, the statement in line 15-16 is not a scientific objective statement (investigating the effect of AV on the cultivation of celeriac). "Investigation" is not an objective (similar to other terms such as study the effect). I assume you are determining the effect of AV on the cultivation of celeriac. You also need to provide a summary of the method, experimental design, data collection in a way that your objective statement is supported. On top of that, from a big-picture perspective, it is hard to understand what main problem this research is about to address or contribute. (For example: if your research contributes to the improved design or enhanced use of AV for large scale cultivation, then you are contributing to food security, or name your own, i.e., energy saving/energy efficient cultivation, renewable energy,  sustainable cultivation, sustainable food production, better use of land, etc)

Introduction:

I would suggest including the problem statement in your opening paragraph.

The introduction is suffering from the lack of a scientific literature review paragraph. It is not possible to have a ballpark figure of the previously published research papers on this topic in the last 5 years. You may include a line about the importance and the use of PV and solar panels in agriculture.

Gorjian, S., Minaei, S., MalehMirchegini, L., Trommsdorff, M., & Shamshiri, R. R. (2020). Applications of solar PV systems in agricultural automation and robotics. In Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conversion (pp. 191-235). Academic Press.

 

Line 44-51: Some part of this paragraph looks like to belong to the materials and method section, not the introduction.

 

Line 67: Please correct the objective statement: The aim of this study was to investigate…

Line 69: Please define your hypothesis statement after the objective statement.

Line 67-77: The entire paragraph is extremely poor and confusing. Authors jump from objective statement to literature review and basic introduction.

 

Materials and method:

Line 103: What microclimate station? Please name the device/instrument. What was the measuring frequency? Please also indicate the name of the sensor probes and their accuracy (make/model of the soil temperature sensors, accuracy, etc)

 

Line 106-107: Please indicate if you had your instrument calibrated with those from the Baden-Werttemberg? If not, how do you know that the measurement from that weather station that is 2km away from your field is not significantly different from direct measurement in the field?

 

Line 116-121: This is a result, not a part of the methodology. Please use a table and summarize this in your result section.

 

Figure 3: This is a result, not a part of the methodology.

Result:

Please provide a summary plot of your microclimate, Soil T, Light, etc data (time-series). You have mentioned that the data have been already presented in another paper, but you still need to provide a summary here for the readers.

 

Conclusion:

Most statements in the conclusion are too general. Authors keep stating that further this or further that is required. Please improve your conclusion. 

Reference:

Some of the cited literature are as old as 1995. Please update.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The topic address by the authors is of high interest in the opinion of this reviewer. Considering the land restrictions and future perspectives, the use of land either for food and energy is expected to be a critical factor in oncoming years.

I have the following comments to the authors:

• Suggest to suggest the term “agriphotovoltaic, AgriPV”, and not “agrivoltaic, AV”, to refer to the technology, as PV is based on the “photovoltaic” effect. It looks to me to be the most widely used term nowadays by different authors.
• The authors cite the following work “Weselek, A.; Bauerle, A.; Hartung, J.; Zikeli, S.; Lewandowski, I.; Högy, P. Microclimate crop development and harvestable crop yield of grass-clover, potatoes and winter wheat in 510 an Agrivoltaic system under organic management in south-west Germany. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 2021, submitted.”, to provide conclusions of previous work. This reviewer has been unable to access to that document; it seems to not be published. I suggest the authors to provide a more updated reference of that work, in case it is published, or at least to include further details in this work, otherwise it is not possible to evaluate the present work based on the previous investigations of the authors. Many conclusions and descriptions of the system and their evaluation are referred to that previous work, for instance in section 2 of this paper.
• Please add a legend to figure 4 to better distinguish between the AgriPV system and the reference one. I also suggest to use other mark, like arrows or bars, to better indicate the difference between both systems.
• I suggest to add a table that summarized the main difference in terms of atmospheric conditions and main results of the plants, for instance, height, etc.
• I think the paper miss a detail of the PV output. It would be interesting to see the PV production in each case to understand the global benefit. For instance, the PV yield for each month during the monitoring process would be so useful to better understand the benefits of AgroPV, compared with a reference system. You could also include a table or figure to summarized the main results in section 3. This is key to investigate the balance between plants growing because of the installation of a PV systems, and the benefits due to PV production, which also has an important economic add value.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Can be accepted