Effect of Different Ratios of Cow Manure and Chemical Fertilizers on Fruit Quality of Gala Apples

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

The manuscript reported the impact of different ratios of mineral fertilizer to cow manure on apple productivity and fruit quality. The field experiment (2017–2020) is well designed and explained in the manuscript although a slight language polish is still needed. There are two main problems in the manuscript. Firstly, the statistical analysis section is lacking and the author did not talk about the year effect at all. Secondly, the result and discussion section are mainly filled with results, more discussion is needed. Please refer to the attachment for more comments.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Dear Reviewer1:

Thank you for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Effect of different ratios of cow manure and chemical fertilizers on fruit quality of Gala apples” (ID: agronomy-1995476). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper. The main responds to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing:

 

Point 1: Please add a citation of where you obtain the soil type informant.

 

Response 1: The soil type was determined by our observation and analysis of the soil and the type of soil distribution in our country

 

Point 2: Please provide the justification of why calculating cow manure based on N content rather than available N, which means the N mineralized from cow manure and is available to plant. All N in chemical fertilizer could be plant available in a short time but how about cow manure? Will all N in cow manure be plant available the year applied?

 

Response 2: The mineralized N in cow manure is slowly released in the soil and gradually utilized. The reason why total N was used to calculate cow manure in this study is that this study is a long-term positioning experiment and we need to ensure that the total input N content is the same, if we use effective N, it will lead to different total input N content, which is contrary to our experimental purpose

 

Point 3: It seems that the P and K rates are inconsistent across all the fertilizer treatments. Please acknowledge that in the text.

 

Response 3: In this experiment, the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium of chemical fertilizers were input in the ratio of 2:1:2 in three periods, which is a ratio that has been proven to be beneficial to the absorption of nutrients by fruit trees, and the P and K content of cow manure could not be controlled, so that it could be brought in naturally, and the total P and K content of each treatment would have some differences.

 

Point 4:

Please explain why fertilizer treatments did not cause significant difference (Tables 3) for fruit color in your experiment given you wrote: mineral nutrition affect anthocyanin accumulation which can determine fruit color.

 

Response 4: Anthocyanins can affect fruit color, but other factors can also affect fruit color, such as light, water, etc. Therefore, it is possible that other factors have more influence on fruit skin color than fertilizer, so there is no significant difference in fruit color under different fertilization treatments

 

Point 5:This sentence(3.2. Total soluble solids, titratable acid, sugar-acid fraction) is not the result, is it? Please describe the result first.

 

Response 5:In this sentence the results are described in the analysis and discussion below

 

Point 6:100% CF had significantly greater fruit weight than 100%CM treatment but the yield remained similar between these two fertilizer treatments. You could dig it out to discuss the possible explanation.

 

Response 6: The fruit ripening process may result in certain losses due to weather conditions, etc. Therefore, the pattern of fruit yield and weight per fruit may vary.

 

We appreciate for Reviewer warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.

Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Dear Authors I cannot find much difference in respect of the previous submission.
In particular I regret you to have not completed the conclusion as requested, even a negative response is an interesting response.

In the tables when no statistically significant difference are detected  the means  have to be followed by  " n.s." instaed of "a"

I regred  you have  not described and quoted  the methodology applied in surface colour test.

Please take previous file (attached) as a guide for suggested corrections

Kind regards

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer2:

Thank you for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Effect of different ratios of cow manure and chemical fertilizers on fruit quality of Gala apples” (ID: agronomy-1995476). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper. The main responds to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing:

 

Point 1:

Commented [A10]: Do you mean "block" and and for "each group" do you mean plot? If so please change, otherwise please use plot and block to describe the experimental designeee arrangement.

Commented [A11]: Change as suggested in red or a table with allr the npk value will be better considering each treatment NPK amount and not only the manure content.

Commented [A12R11]: Please specify the age at the start of the trial (2017) and when the half dose were used.

 

Response 1: We have re-described “2.2. Experimental design and field management”

 

Point 2: Commented [A17]: Please add references and explain the method

 

Response 2: We have added a description of the fruit colour index and the reference

 

Point 3: Commented [A18]: I do not its meaning “glander”

 

Response 3: “glander” means bottle sealer

 

    All other questions have been modified in the manuscript

We appreciate for Reviewer warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.

Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

The manuscript quality was improved, however, there are two main things that still need to be considered for revision. 

1) add what post-hoc test you used to identify the significance across treatments.

2) display p-values results rather than "*" throughout the manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Dear Reviewer1:

Thank you for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Effect of different ratios of cow manure and chemical fertilizers on fruit quality of Gala apples” (ID: agronomy-1995476). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in yellow in the paper. The main responds to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing:

 

Point 1: Did you test the year effect? What post-hoc test did you use? add what post-hoc test you used to identify the significance across treatments.

 

Response 1: The data measured in this experiment are for one year and do not test the year effect.

We use LSD for post-hoc test in this experiment.

 

Point 2: Please check all the citations throughout the manuscript, in this case, year may need to be included.

 

Response 2: We have added the year to these references.

 

Point 3: Display p-values results rather than "*" throughout the manuscript.

 

Response 3: Thank you for the reviewers’ comments. We think this is a good suggestion, However, our data statistics are all significantly different at the 0.05 level, so we thought we could mark the table with * and explain in the table notes

We appreciate for Reviewer warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.

Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions

Please see the attachment

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

I appreciated that finally the requested improvements have been included in the article. it would have been better for everyone if they had already been acknowledged at the first request for correction.

Kind regards

Author Response

We apologize for not being able to revise the manuscript in time last time and thank you very much for your comments on this manuscript

Kind regards

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, I am sorry not to be able to give my consent to the publication of your work which would have been very interesting given the long trial period. My objection is on the huge amount of nitrogen that has been added even for a poor soil. For a re-proposal, please arrange the tables and make the untreated control appear in all of them and accurately describe the results especially for the color of the apples: you must tell the meaning of the parameters adopted by introducing better the technique and its references in the materials and methods. Please explain the need for a so high amount of nitrogen.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall an interesting paper

The following recomendations should be followed or (if the case) explained why will not be changed:

Reference list

1. Authors should follow reference format from the journal (E.g. year in bold leters for research articles)

2. Scientific names should be italized (E.g. line 307, 311) (Point 3.6 in authors submision guidelines)

3. Journal name format should be uniform, either abreviated or not (Although it abreviation is not requested in the authorus guidelines)

4. In references use only lowercase or scentence case, and avoid alternating between upper case and lowercase (E.g. 54, 190, 369)

5. 35% of references are older than 7 yeas. Up to date references are avialable in the topic.

6. in 54 you cited Amarante as he had some results with organic fertilizers, could be good to add the comparison against an specific treatment they used, specially to state what do you mean by "more" (in what percentage and if this was significant, or the fold change compared to conventional fertilier)

7. 56 and 59 has a similar issue as previously stated regarding comarisons or the use of "more", "higher" and "reasonable"

8. could be important to define or unify the meaning of organic, bio-organic, or bio fertilizers so, the reader can distiguish their diferences as used by the authors or if they authors refere to the same thing, then the correct word should be used.

9. There are some punctuation mistakes (E.g. 67)

10. Verify spelling mistakes (E.g. 86)

11. The introduction could be improoved as it does not goes from a general to a particular idea.

12. What was the criteria to select the apples?

13. is organic fertilizer the manure? if so, please state this in the text. It could be of help it the authors could define organic fertilizer and how manure is included in this definition.

14. at 190, authors should state if Khorram used manure or other fertilizer to make the comparison.

15. If no diferences were measured, tables might not be necesary apart from a text statement (E.g. no diferences were observed in Lab colors), for table 3 and 4

16. Authors sould discuss their results deeply, specially regarding the final table. (E.g. which of the volatile compounds is more relevant for the aroma and taste, and if so, did they change regarding treatment?)