Fine-Tuning N Fertilization for Forage and Grain Production of Barley–Field Bean Intercropping in Mediterranean Environments

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Fine-tuning N fertilization for forage and grain production of barley-field bean intercropping in Mediterranean environments

 Determining the optimal rate of nitrogen application is of interest to an experiment in barley-field bean intercropping in Mediterranean environments. The text layout of the whole paper needs to be adjusted

Introduction

The preface needs to be rewritten, it is suggested to combine the preface reasonably to increase the logic of the exposition.

Materials and Methods

Line 143: Walk–Black method; The method has another name. Walkley and Black

Line 186: Are nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium fertilization the same for barley and field beans? If not, please specify the amount and time of application?

Lines 201-204: Didn't find the distance between barley and field bean? Because spacing is closely related to intercropping advantage.

Line 118:  I would like to know the management method of weeding and pests and diseases, is it artificial and chemical? It is recommended to add it in section 2.3 of the article.

In the 2.5 Statistical Analysis section, what software should be added for graphing?

Results

Line 349. Should "slighly" be changed to "slightly"?

Line 524. Should "assessed" be changed to "assessed"?

Line 580. "by" should be removed?

Line 583. Should "significnat" be changed to "significant"?

Line 624. Should "unsignificant" be changed to "insignificant"?

In the results part, I feel that such a classification expression is a bit messy. It is recommended to integrate the indicators of barley and field bean for expression.

Discussion

Line 700. "mediterranean climates" should be changed to "Mediterranean climates"?

Line 722. "previuosly" misspelling

Line 731. “non legume”?

Line 819. "forag" is spelled wrong, please fix it?

Conclusions

The conclusion part needs to be rewritten. I feel that there are a lot of things written. It is recommended to condense the language to make the conclusion more concise and clear.

Author Response

please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript Agronomy-1578318, entitled 'Fine-tuning N-fertilisation for forage and grain production of barley-bean intercropping in Mediterranean environments' by Pampana et al. reports the results of a two-year field experiment in which was evaluated the effect of crop systems and nitrogen fertilisation on productive performance of barley and bean, as sole crop and intercropping adopting an additive experimental design.

Considering the importance of intercropping research for developing new sustainable cropping systems as the authors well point out in the introduction (lines 32-45), I believe that the manuscript is of considerable interest to readers of “Agronomy” and falls fully into its scope.

In general, the experimental work was carried out following a severe scientific logic and according to widely used methods that allowed reliable results. In fact, the authors applied an appropriate experimental design, analsyses have been conducted correctly and the statistical analysis was appropriate.

However, some changes are needed.

The introduction is good and adequate. The materials and methods are clearly described and only a few small changes are needed:

1) Line 154: Therefore, every year 15 treatments (45 plots);

2) Nitrogen fertilization used for legume (SC) is the same as for barley? And when it was done? It seems to me unsustainable to use 200 kg of nitrogen; the results of your work reported in the bibliography (43) are sufficient to justify these levels of nitrogen fertilization for a legume in intercrop and especially in sole crop.

The results are good but very extensive with tables and figures and need some changes to make the presentation more efficacious.

1) Overall I suggest reducing the number of figures and using tables (e.g. figures a,b,c, and d);

2) In figures, do the vertical bars indicate the error? In order to present the averages significance, it is advisable to use letters, also in the graphs, and possibly include the standard deviation with the vertical bars. In addition, in figure captions it should be stated that - for each treatment the differences.............according to Tukey's HSD Test (P≤ 0.05);

3) How does fava bean biomass vary in relation to different N doses?

4) In figure 5, the SC data refer to which species (barley, field beans, average)? I suggest that separate data for the two species could be included in the graph and that figure 6 could be deleted. The same applies to figures 11 and 12;

5) In table 1 the asterisks at the bottom are not reflected in the table. In addition, the sentence "Within treatments and columns, values followed by the same letter are not statistically different for P ≤ 0.05" according to Tukey's HSD Test should be moved down. Do the same in tables 2, 3, 4 and 5;

6) The total LER of figures 7 and 13 can be entered in tables 2 and 4 respectively.

The discussion is well developed and complete in explaining all aspects investigated.

The conclusions are based on the results obtained.

The written language is clear.

I hope my comments can help the authors to improve the manuscript.

Author Response

please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf