Design and Experiment of Gripper for Greenhouse Plug Seedling Transplanting Based on EDM

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Perhaps DEM abbreviation (discrete element modeling) should be mentioned in the title of the manuscript instead of EDEM (which is a software solution)?

Thematically the work is interesting for the researchers and professionals and the proposed manuscript is relevant to the scope of the journal.

I found it appropriate for Agronomy journal, but only after some modifications and clarification from the Authors.
The title is a clear representation of the manuscript's content. The abstract reflects realistically the substance of the work. 

The overall organization and structure of the manuscript are appropriate. The paper is well written and the topic is appropriate for the journal.
The aim of the paper is well described and the discussion was well approached, its results and discussion are correlated to the cited literature data.

The literature review is comprehensive and properly done.

Statistical interpretation of the analytical data must be more properly presented. The verification of the model should be performed. 

There are very few analyses on the experimental results and numerical results. In experiments, only the so called mixing index was analyzed. In numerical simulations, the analyses were limited to two figures, which can hardly yield any insightful information or better understanding on the processes. Especially for the numerical results, comparably more detailed analyses can be found in other related studies in the literature. 

Other Specific Comments: The work is properly presented in terms of the language. The work presented here is very interesting and well done, it is presented in a compact manner.

Can the authors confirm which model has been used in the simulations and what are the actual input parameters?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I find this a well written and interesting manuscript which provides a simulation and a real application of prototypes of grippers with the study of the effect on seedlings. I suggest publication after minor revision.

 

Please change the keywords: the keywords should not repeat the words in the title 

 

The introduction is clear and informative, however I would add other possible applications in agriculture and not only the transplanting from a tray to another.

 

Again I would suggest to the authors, based on the results, to focus more on different applications in the results and discussion and conclusion part

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf