Impact of Adding Anaerobic Digestate to Soil and Consequences on Crop Performance

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

The paper "Impact of Adding Anaerobic Digestate to Soil and Consequences on Crop Performance" aimed to verify whether "Anaerobic digestate is proposed as an alternative to inorganic fertilisers", is well written but lacks of the fundamental experimental agronomic design to obtain the conclusions you wrote: Results suggest that digestate may be used to replace synthetic fertilisers when applied in a range of soils.

You have obtained only preliminary results in controlled conditions and not in open field. In the literature many papers demonstrated that the digestates can be used as fertilizers, whose characteristics are similar to mineral nitrogen fertilizers.

In particular, the application of 480 kg/ha of total N to growing spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is too much (usually are necessary < 200 kg/ha total N).

Author Response

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the comments made by the reviewers on our manuscript “Impact of adding anaerobic digestate to soil and consequences on crop performance”. Below we given our detailed answers to the reviewer’s comments and indicated where changes have been made within the manuscript. If any further clarification is required please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments

Specific comments

Materials and methods

1.     L89: Do you mean similar bulk density with the described digestate from L82?

2.     L92: Suggestion: Digestates presented a 5 and 4% DM for ……, respectively.

3.     L105: The correct term to be used is monoammonium phosphate (MAP), since in table 1 and 2 you use this term (MAP), better to also use in the above line.

4.     L136: you have already mention on L134 that the experiment had 5 replications. No need to repeat that.

5.     L131-139: Since the treatments in the experiment 2 are the same as in the experiment 1, better to rewrite this information. Suggestion:

“A six-week greenhouse study ….with five replications per treatment which are the same as those on the experiment 1.” The amendment of the soil was done by weighting 400g of soil into each pot (0.5L) and soils from three different locations were used: Hartwood, Pilmore and Crudie.

6.     L163: Since you are mentioning analysis of pH and EC, you should better change the 2.3. tittle to include that information.

Results

7.     L232: Results and Discussion should be mentioned as chapter 3, or results 3 and discussion 4

8.     L257: Concentration

Figures and tables

1.     Figure 1: Is that figure related with experiment 2 or 3? Since in the test above you are mentioning about experiment 2.

2.     For supplementary figures there is nothing showing the significance differences between the treatments.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor revision should be done

Author Response

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the comments made by the reviewers on our manuscript “Impact of adding anaerobic digestate to soil and consequences on crop performance”. Below we given our detailed answers to the reviewer’s comments and indicated where changes have been made within the manuscript. If any further clarification is required please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript titled “Impact of Adding Anaerobic Digestate to Soil and Consequences on Crop Performance” investigated the effect of two application rates of anaerobic digestate on the soil and growth of Hordeum vulgare L. The obtained results are meaningful to the practical use of Anaerobic Digestate for crop growth. Here are some detailed comments.

1.      L315-316, please confirm if the expression was right? It seemed that was inconsistent with the figure 1, where D120 had the highest value.

2.      Figure 2, please confirm the significance level labeled for Hartwood sample (g and f, Inverted?)

3.      Figure 3 and 5, no significance level was labeled.

4.      Figure 6, it is suggested to add the sample title on the figure.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

 Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the comments made by the reviewers on our manuscript “Impact of adding anaerobic digestate to soil and consequences on crop performance”. Below we given our detailed answers to the reviewer’s comments and indicated where changes have been made within the manuscript. If any further clarification is required please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please find enclosed the detailed review.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the comments made by the reviewers on our manuscript “Impact of adding anaerobic digestate to soil and consequences on crop performance”. Below we given our detailed answers to the reviewer’s comments and indicated where changes have been made within the manuscript. If any further clarification is required please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

We ask to change the title of the ms. as follow:

"Impact of adding anaerobic digestate to soil and consequences on crop performance in a greenhouse experiment".

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript has been improved sufficiently.