Long-term Tillage Alters Soil Properties and Rhizosphere Bacterial Community in Lime Concretion Black Soil under Winter Wheat–Summer Maize Double-Cropping System

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper entitled" Long-term tillage alters soil properties and rhizosphere bacte- 2 rial community in lime concretion black soil under winter 3 wheat–summer maize double-cropping system" was checked. The paper contains very interesting data regarding the bacterial community and its impact on soil quality and the related index for sustainability. However, some of the questions need to be addressed:

1-How much repetition for NGS analysis of the bacteria using 16S was obtained? It was four, or four for all tillage types?

2-In abstract and result indicated that ST, and PT were better results for the bacterial community, especially for keystone taxa. However, the pictures, especially Figure 1 indicate that the result of NT and the rest are more or less the same. The authors must explain the contradiction or explain how the difference are? What about the keystone bacteria affecting the other organism in the soil? or the plants? Which one of them is a nitrogen absorption helper? etc.,

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

Thanks very much for your comments concerning our manuscript. The comments are valuable and very helpful for improving our paper. We have thought the comments carefully over and have made correction which we hope meet with your approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and responds to the comments are as follows:

1. How much repetition for NGS analysis of the bacteria using 16S was obtained? It was four, or four for all tillage types?

Reply: Thanks for your attention and questions. There are three replicates per tillage type. We totally obtained twelve samples for NGS analysis.

 

2. In abstract and result indicated that ST, and PT were better results for the bacterial community, especially for keystone taxa. However, the pictures, especially Figure 1 indicate that the result of NT and the rest are more or less the same. The authors must explain the contradiction or explain how the difference are? What about the keystone bacteria affecting the other organism in the soil? or the plants? Which one of them is a nitrogen absorption helper? etc.

Reply: Thanks for your questions. As Figure 1 cannot clearly show the differences between the different treatments, we conducted a significance test which was shown in supplemental Figure S2. The effects of the keystone bacteria on plants have been discussed in the part of 4.2. As suggested, we have added the some more functions of the keystone bacteria in the discussion.

 

Thank again for your comments and suggestions.

Best wishes!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Specific comments:

·        I suggest changing the beginning of the introduction (L. 38-50) to make it more universal.

·     On what basis were the doses of mineral fertilization determined? (L.100-102)

·       Please provide more details for the methods which have been used to characterize soil properties.

·     Please introduce every abbreviation and acronym before using it in the text (put them in parentheses after the full terms).

·       Why are the results for 2017 and 2018 given in Table 1? In the case of other results, years were not specified.  Only 2018 is mentioned in the Material and method (L. 116).

·        Please increase the readability of the figures.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

Thanks for the quick handling of our manuscript and we are pleased with the received comments. The comments are all valuable and very helpful for improving our paper. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and responds to the comments are as follows:

1. I suggest changing the beginning of the introduction (L. 38-50) to make it more universal.

Reply: As suggested, we have modified the beginning of the introduction in the revised manuscript.

2. On what basis were the doses of mineral fertilization determined? (L.100-102)

Reply: Thanks for your attention. In maize season, fertilizers were applied before planting to meet the production goal of about 12 Mg ha⁻¹.

3. Please provide more details for the methods which have been used to characterize soil properties.

Reply: As suggested, we have added more details for the methods which have been used to characterize soil properties.

4. Please introduce every abbreviation and acronym before using it in the text (put them in parentheses after the full terms).

Reply: Sorry for this kind of mistakes. As suggested, we have modified it in the revised manuscript.

5. Why are the results for 2017 and 2018 given in Table 1? In the case of other results, years were not specified. Only 2018 is mentioned in the Material and method (L. 116).

Reply: We originally intended to show that the yield difference between treatments was consistent over two years. The yield in 2017 is indeed abrupt as all other results are from 2018. As suggested, we have deleted the yield in 2017 and changed the table to a figure.

6. Please increase the readability of the figures.

Reply: Thanks for your suggestion. We have modified the figures and re-uploaded the original figures as an attachment.

 

Thank you again.

Best wishes!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf