A Case Study in Desertified Area: Soybean Growth Responses to Soil Structure and Biochar Addition Integrating Ridge Regression Models

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting study about soybean growth responses to soil structure and biochar addition. I have few recommendations for the authors, to make the manuscript clearer:

• Please revise the English language editing and style by native speaker.
• Soil pH and EC are also treated as basic soil chemistry in other studies and have a great influence on plant growth. Is there any reason for excluding them from this study?
• Line 127-131, Why is fertilizer treatment different on clay soils and sandy soils? differences in fertilizer treatment can lead to significant differences in plant growth
• Please add detailed soil p, K, Ca, Mg analysis method. (Mehlich?)
• Table 2-3, Revised table size, RQ's data could not be viewed
• Figure 5, 6, Resolution was too low to see
• In figure 6, RDA 1 was 54.28% and variance of RDA 1 was 69.07%(2.17135/3.14359*100). Why are these two results different?
• Figure 8, recommended to add an x-axis title
• Line 340-343, quadratic and cubic polynomial regression are not in the figure, and readers who are unfamiliar with this content need to explain what they mean

Author Response

Please find the reply from the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

A case study in desertified area: soybean growth responses to soil structure and biochar addition integrating ridge regression models

 

By Ma et al.

 

This manuscript discusses the suitability of sandy clay loam soil in the presence and absence of biochar to grow soybean in a decertified area closer to the Tengger Desert in China. The demand for agricultural land has sharply increased with the concomitant increase in the world’s population over the past few decades. Therefore, the identification and management of lands suitable to grow vegetables are increasingly important to fulfill the food demand. Apart from investigating the soybean production and the harvest in sandy clay loam and silty clay loam soils, the study also focused on how properties of sandy clay loam soils such as soil structure, nutrient content, and addition of two types of biochar influence soybean plant growth and biomass. Biochar is an important soil amendment that has been used for some time to improve soil quality. The authors also have used various modeling approaches to predict soybean growth indicators based on soil properties such as soil nutrients, soil aggregate size soil water content, etc.

 

The manuscript has several issues such as typos, incomplete sentences, poor scientific writing, etc. as highlighted in the annotated manuscript.

 

 

RQ site data are not available in Tables 2 and 3

Figures 5 and 6 are not of good quality

 

Discussion

The measured soil chemical properties in the three sites were not discussed adequately.

 

The purpose of applying modeling techniques is not clear and it lacks clear and logical discussion about the modeling of different parameters.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please find the reply from the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The revised manuscript seems to have been well revised.
But I think it would be good to make minor corrections.

 

1.   Figure 2, 5, 6, 7: recommend to revise figure resolution.
2.   In paper, '2mm' revise to '2 mm'

 

 

Author Response

 

1 Figure 2, 5, 6, 7: recommend to revise figure resolution.

Reply: I am not sure where is the problem, my original word file of the manuscript showed very high resolution. I converted the picture to pdf file for the first round revision, but it seems you still received the low quality. I also submit the pdf version of manuscript this time, could you please also check it?

2 In paper, '2mm' revise to '2 mm'

Reply: we have corrected as you suggested.

Reviewer 2 Report

Following things need to be addressed.

Several incomplete sentences

Never start a sentence with an abbreviation

Please improve the quality of all Figures

Check English

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

1 Several incomplete sentences

Reply: have revised as you mentioned

2 Never start a sentence with an abbreviation

Reply: have revised as you suggested

3 Please improve the quality of all Figures

Reply: I am not sure where is the problem, my original word file of the manuscript showed very high resolution. I converted the picture to pdf file for the first round revision, but it seems you still received the low quality. I also submit the pdf version of manuscript this time, could you please also check it?

4 Check English

Reply: we have checked, and improved.

5 the unit g kg^-1 of concentrations in the table 2

Reply: the unit is correct since it is the concentration of the plant sample but not the soil.