Impact of the Herbicide Oxyfluorfen on the Activities of Some Enzymes Found in Soil and on the Populations of Soil Microorganisms

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In general, this manuscript provide some interesting results of how herbicide oxyfluorfen can impact soil enzymes and microbial community. But some details can be improved before publish:

1. In method section, details of oxyfluorfen application shall be given, such as the amount and concentration of application formula, application time and frequency. Without these critical details, readers cannot evaluate the true influence of this herbicide in practice.
2. Authors using culturing method to count cloning number to present microbial community. As we know, many soil microbes are not culturable, thus it would be nice to have some molecular work add on to give a better idea how this herbicide influence soil microbial community. 
3. Figure 4 and 5 are very interesting, but authors shall provide more details to give readers a better idea, especially these who don't have many background knowledge of enzyme spatial constructions. For example, when it described as "binding mode of oxyfluorfen (grey sticks) to phosphatase from Bacillus subtilis (gray ribbon)", it is very hard to precisely find "grey sticks" and "grey ribbon" on Figure 4. And there has no explanation of red and yellow sticks in figure 4 and 5.
4. English expression is fine in general, but still can be polished to improve the manuscript.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall the manuscript is bed-readable (English style and language must be improved) and only few new informations are brought to the readers. The author used a personal style in this scientific communication (personal pronouns ‘we’  is present in all manuscript…starting with Introduction (p.1 line 14, line 16). Also, the author should improve the style using the passive (e.g.  p.3 line 98: The aim of this study is to assess…) and the correct technical/professional vocabulary.

 

Furthermore, the manuscript several mistakes which should be double checked. Specific comments follow.

 

Introduction

1. 1, line 32: please insert comma before but
2. 1, line 27: please rephrase and use the passive

 The colonies of microorganisms register a slight increase when the herbicide oxyfluorfen is applied, the increase being reduced when a higher dose of oxyfluorfen in applied.

Please verify entire manuscript.

1. 1, line 72, line 73: micropopulation instead of micro population
2. 3, lines 127: please do not capitalize the letter c from Chernozem

 

Materials and methods

1. 4, lines 160-162: please rephrase the sentence (the term soil is at the beginning of the sentence…please eliminate it from the enumeration) “In the case of soil, we have monitored the following physicochemical parameters: temperature t (ºC), soil pH, electrical conductivity of soil (EC), the organic matter content in the soil (OM), the contents of water, NH4-N, NO3-N, and phosphate in the soil [40]’’

 

 

1. 6, lines 243-244: extensive English improvement is need it for all manuscript. For readers is not clear what the authors are meaning with many sentences. For e.g.: Key-samples of 10-1 and 10-6 dilutions were used, starting with 1 gram of soil.

They used also other dilution in the manuscript.

 Other example on the same page, line 247: The steps of this seeding technique are: place the culture medium in Petri dishes, seed the medium with test samples,…

 

 

Results

1. 7, line 291: Figure 1 is not fully explicit. Please improve the figure related to exposure periods.
2. 10, lines 397-399: Figure 3 is not fully explicit (the authors are using different dilution for the groups of microorganisms). Also, please rephrase the sentence.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

NA