Management Practices Affect Soil Organic Carbon Stocks and Soil Fertility in Cactus Orchards

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is interesting and provides interesting results, particularly in relation to semi-arid agriculture. However, it needs improvements, as listed below. Overview photos of the crop would be a nice addition to the text.

Line 30 please reconsider changing keywords for: soil management; Opuntia stricta; sustainable production system; semi-arid regions.
Line 41 please present the range of P and OM in Brazilian soils.
Lines 51-54 please consider changing this sentence as follows: Management strategies that improve soil fertility such as: irrigation [12], intercropping [13], management systems [14], nitrogen (N) fertilization [15] and organic amendments [16,17] are important. Given the high nutrient requirements for growth and increased productivity [11].
Lines 54-55 What are the others?
Line 65 "organic and N fertiliser" - organic fertilisers are also a source of nitrogen. Please correct this sentence. What was the N fertiliser? - The explanation is given in line 115, please add it to line 65.
Lines 72-77 Please refer to Fig. 1
Lines 78-80 How many samples were taken and from what area?
Table 1, the unit for ions is incorrect. Also: the content of Fe, Cu, Zn, Mn is not necessary as you don't refer to it in the text. However, there is no information on carbon and nitrogen content and soil grain size distribution.
Lines 85-93 please refer to Figure 1.
Lines 123-128 What was the total mass of the sample? How many samples were taken? How often was this done?
Line 131 please follow with units (dm3 or l).
Fig 2,3,4,5, - please give a short description. Add the description below. The presentation of the data is difficult to understand as some data is presented in tables and some in figures. Again - it's difficult to go from one point to another just to compare results for e.g. soil V. Why do you present Table 3 and 4 separately? Why is there only Mg in Table 2? Please add an explanation for Aa, Ba, ABa, etc. in the tables.
In lines 407-411 you refer to soil C without giving any information about the carbon content of the tested soil before, during and after the experiment.

Author Response

See attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript could help us understand the influence of manure and picking frequency on soil properties, which could help us increase agricultural productivity of Cactus orchard by improving management practice in turn. However, the quality of the present manuscript was not high, and whole aspects had to improve before publishing, including Introduction part and Discussion part. For example, too much more data which should be included in Result part were showed in Discussion part, and less research advance and comparison were put here to show the difference, significance and outlook of the manuscript. More important, the logic of the text was not clear. I suggest the authors rewritten the manuscript. I believe the revised version could be more acceptable.

 

Abstract part:

(1) Only the second and the third sentence from bottom showed the concrete result or data, and the told that the organic fertilizer was cattle manure. The former sentence said the experiment was pot (organic fertilizer), subplot (inorganic fertilizer) and sub-subpot (cattle manure). However, no information was showed about inorganic fertilizer. Abstract should be an integrated small story.

(2) More usage of fertilizer, more C and N storage in soil. The result was not attractive at all.

(3) What does the number “30 Mg ha-1 year-1 , 126 Mg C ha-1, 26 and 13 Mg N ha-1 at 0- to 20-cm depth” mean? Is this the highest value in all treatments? The maximum value in the application range?

 

Keywords:

(1) Management was so big, please specify.

(2) Sustainability contains many factors. High soil organic carbon stocks and high soil fertility do not necessarily mean high sustainability.

 

Introduction part:

The whole content was all commonsense, very basic knowledge.

(1) The relevant research progress is not reported or there was a research gap?

(2) Why you made the hypothesis? You did not tell the other research results about biennial frequency on soil chemical characteristics for the crop or other crop.

(3) What are the effects of organic fertilizers on specific soil chemical characteristics? Are previous studies consistent?

 

Results:

(1) The format of charts and tables is not canonical. For example, the table is not a three-wire table. Line charts have no scale. The chart is very unclear. P value should be in italics.

 

 

Conclusion

What means positively soil chemical characteristics？ High soil chemical characteristics reflect a sustainable practice？

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

need improve logic

Author Response

see attached document

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Article has been revised and can be published in present form.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Agree to publish.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Its ok.