Printed Sowing of High-Density Mechanical Transplanted Hybrid Rice Can Reduce the Amount of Fertilizer Needed
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript presents an original research approach on finding effective ways to increase yields and reduce production costs and environmental pollution risks. The presented research methodology was designed correctly, the statistical elaboration performed correctly made it possible to present the influence of the studied factors on the parameters of rice growth and, finally, to present recommendations for cultivation during the growing season in which one crop of rice grain is harvested. The recommendations presented were corresponded with data from other research works cited by the authors of the manuscript.
The following elements in the manuscript need improvement:
1. The erroneous units of rice grain yield are given in Table 2, instead of t hm-1 it should be t ha-1
2. In the abstract, in line 22, instead of LLD it should be LDLF
3. Table 3 should be re-edited, as the entire contents of the table cannot be seen
4. In line 325 "Then apply fertilizer at the gestation stage to accumulate biomass for rice filling," the sentence should refer more to the earlier context, for easier understanding, instead of the phrase "the gestation," the phrase "the maturity" is more appropriate in the plant context.
Author Response
Major issues:
1.Responds to comments: The erroneous units of rice grain yield are given in Table 2, instead of t hm-1 it should be t ha-1
Response: Thank you for your careful comment. We have checked the manuscript and made changes accordingly. In Table 2, we adopted the standard unit of yield:(t·ha-1).
2.Responds to comments: In the abstract, in line 22, instead of LLD it should be LDLF
Response: Thank you for your careful comment. We have checked the manuscript and made changes accordingly in line 28.“The yields of rice in the LDLF, MDHF, MDLF, and HDHF were lower than that in the LDHF and HDLF.”
3.Responds to comments: Table 3 should be re-edited, as the entire contents of the table cannot be seen
Response: Thank you for your valuable advice. This may be due to the different versions of the software. We have made adjustments to Table 3.
4.Responds to comments: In line 325 "Then apply fertilizer at the gestation stage to accumulate biomass for rice filling," the sentence should refer more to the earlier context, for easier understanding, instead of the phrase "the gestation," the phrase "the maturity" is more appropriate in the plant context.
Response: I ' m sorry for my carelessness and thank you for your advice. We made the modification in line 371.“Then, fertilizer was applied at the maturity stage to accumulate biomass for rice filling (Table 5).”
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The article entitled “Printing sowing high density mechanical transplanting of hybrid rice can reduce the amount of fertilizer” is interesting and be accepted for publication in the Agronomy journal after the following major revisions:
1. Paper requires extensive English and syntax corrections.
2. Title: dash between “high-density”.
3. Rephrase the first sentence of the abstract. It is too long and hard to read.
4. Rewrite all keywords to become more relevant and shorter.
5. Avoid using impersonal words like our, us, we…
6. Rewrite the last two paragraphs of the introduction. They should show the novelty and objectives of the study in a single paragraph.
7. Source of Figure 1 data?
8. Some readings of Tables are not visible. Reduce the font size and make it fit the page width.
9. Data analysis: Origin or OriginLab? Also, the software version is outdated.
10. Line 138: two times use of package,
11. * Significant at the P=0.05/P=0.01 should be changed to P<0.05/P<0.01
12. Line 250: Something is missing.
Author Response
1.Responds to comments: Paper requires extensive English and syntax corrections.
Response: Thank you for your valuable advice. We asked a professional organization to help us solve the language problems.
2.Responds to comments: Title: dash between “high-density”.
Response: Thank you for your valuable advice. We have checked the manuscript and made changes accordingly in line 1.“Printed sowing of high-density mechanical transplanted hybrid rice can reduce the amount of fertilizer needed”
3.Responds to comments: Rephrase the first sentence of the abstract. It is too long and hard to read.
Response: Thank you for your valuable advice. From line 10 to line 13 we made the following modifications “In this study, we investigated how printed sowing machine transplanting impacts the yield of single-season rice by increasing the planting density and decreasing the amount of fertilizer needed. The study was aimed at exploring the relationships between the amount of fertilizer, transplanting density, and rice yield.”.
4.Responds to comments:Rewrite all keywords to become more relevant and shorter.
Response: Thank you for your suggestions. The key words were changed “hybrid rice; printing sowing technology; density; fertilizer ; yield” in line 35.
5.Responds to comments: Avoid using impersonal words like our, us, we…
Response: Thank you for your careful comment. We have checked the manuscript and made changes accordingly. These words are replaced like“this, this research showed that”
6.Responds to comments: Rewrite the last two paragraphs of the introduction. They should show the novelty and objectives of the study in a single paragraph.
Response: Thank you for your valuable advice. In order to clarify the purpose and significance of this study more clearly. During line65-79, We have modified the manuscript “The printing sowing technology was first put forward by Huang M in 2018 [15]. It has the advantages of reducing seeding-amount, prolonging seedling age, increasing yield, and has great value in alleviating the contradiction between early rice emergency harvest and late rice emergency sowing in double cropping rice areas.
In the past, the research about increasing the density and decreasing the fertilizer of this technology has been mainly focused on double-cropping rice planting [16,17], it has not been reported in single-season rice production. Therefore, this study was carried out in 2019 and 2020 using printing sowing machine-transplant mode. In the study, agronomic traits affecting rice yield, including the aerial biomass, LAI, SPAD and yield components were tested. The objectives of this study were as follows: (1) explore the effects of different fertilizer rates and planting densities on rice growth and yield, (2) determine the optimal combination of planting density and fertilization rate. This work is expected to provide a reference for " saving cost and increasing income" in rice production, and provide support for promoting the transplanting technology of printing sowing for hybrid rice.”
7.Responds to comments: Source of Figure 1 data?
Response: Thank you for your valuable advice. From line 102 to line 105, we explained how to get meteorological data. “The cumulative solar radiation (Fig.1-A) and average temperature per day (Fig.1-B) during the rice growing seasons in 2019 and 2020 were measured at a meteorological station near the experimental site and are shown in Fig. 1.”
8.Responds to comments:Some readings of Tables are not visible. Reduce the font size and make it fit the page width.
Response: Thank you for your valuable advice. This may be due to the different versions of the software. We have made adjustments to Table 3.
9.Responds to comments: Data analysis: Origin or OriginLab? Also, the software version is outdated.
Response: Thank you for your valuable advice. Check the software version of Origin. It’s OriginPro 2021. Software OriginPro 2021 comes from OriginLab. In line 165:“charts were generated using OriginPro 2021 (OriginLab, Hampton, MA, USA).”
10.Responds to comments: Line 138: two times use of package,
Response: Thank you for your valuable advice. We have checked the manuscript and made changes accordingly in line 167.
11.Responds to comments:* Significant at the P=0.05/P=0.01 should be changed to P<0.05/P<0.01
Response: Thank you for your valuable advice. The "=" in our paper has been changed.
12.Responds to comments: Line 250: Something is missing.
Response: We are sorry for our negligence of the citation. We added the corresponding content to the revision. Line 287-290:“The direct effect of the density on the yield had a value of 0.3838, the indirect effect had a value of 0.2794, and the total effect had a value of 0.6632, indicating that the increase in the density had a positive effect on the increase in the yield.”
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
