Biochar Amends Saline Soil and Enhances Maize Growth: Three-Year Field Experiment Findings

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors have done an excellent job by putting their research paper together.

They may like to conduct economic analysis of biochar amendments and impact on yeild in their future research.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I find the topic of the article to be both intellectually intriguing and stimulating, as it touches on important and thought-provoking issues that resonate with my own experiences and perspectives. The author's skillful handling of the subject matter has captured my attention and kept me engaged throughout, making for a truly engrossing read. Here you can fine my comments:

Line 31: Add a discussion about all the problems related to saline soils. (Ex. Saline stress for crops)

Line 51: Add some possible negative effect of Biochar to have a complete picture of this improver. In this Paper 10.1016/j.catena.2021.105754 they founded that Biochar increased the EC of leaching water, that can be problematic for saline soils.

Line 176: ha^-1

Line 199: Add reference.

Line 205: Add more references about improving water content, for example in this paper they found that Biochar improved the soil water retention curve  https://doi.org/10.3390/w15071297

Line 217-219: You didn’t measure microbiological activity, so you can remove this sentence.

Line 232: “significant impact was not detected in alkaline 231 soils such as calcareous” thit is not true, in fact in the paper that I mentioned before (10.1016/j.catena.2021.105754) they found an increase of pH after the application of Biochar in a Sandy Calcisol.

Line 235: Add references

Improve the conclusion section summarizing the results using bullet points.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript “Biochar amends saline soil and enhances maize growth: Three year field experiment findings” is an interesting study. However, authors should improve some aspects:

1.       In the introduction and discussion section, the authors should point out the importance of the crop selected for the experiments, and also about the variations in biochar’s composition.

2.      Also, the authors should indicate the importance of the selected crop in the area where the evaluation were carried out, and the effect of salinity in corn crop.

3.       Additionally, the authors did not comment about the effect of the evaluations in the production of the crop.

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx