Development of Lycium barbarum–Forage Intercropping Patterns
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Congratulations!
Author Response
Thank you very much for your support and encouragement, which is a great encouragement to me, I will continue to work hard in this area of continuous improvement and progress.
We sincerely appreciate the editors and reviewers for their thoughtful comments and recommendations on our manuscript. Those comments are very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guidance to other research. We have studied the comments carefully and have modified the manuscript accordingly. We hope this revised manuscript will meet the journal’s high standards. The main corrections are in the manuscript and the response to the reviewers’ comments are highlighted in red.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is well written all sections of the paper are very good. The Authors discussed one of the most important trend research in agriculture science. Many recent research indicate that the intercropping contributes increasing the yield. I believe that the intercropping impact of the yield should get more attention. In this regard, I encourage more research on the intercropping impact such as this paper. Although the intercropping impact relays on the plant-plant interactions, this paper focused on the negative interaction (competition). There is another type of plant-plant interactions which is a positive interaction and called (facilitation). I would like to encourage the author to write some thin on this type of interaction in the introduction and can help to justify the positive correlation of wolfberry intercropping.
Line 415-417: there is no family called Chenopodium but there is a subfamily called Chenopodioideae under the family of Amaranthaceae
Figures 3, 4 are not clear to me, need re-editing.
Author Response
Point 1: The paper is well written all sections of the paper are very good. The Authors discussed one of the most important trend research in agriculture science. Many recent research indicate that the intercropping contributes increasing the yield. I believe that the intercropping impact of the yield should get more attention. In this regard, I encourage more research on the intercropping impact such as this paper. Although the intercropping impact relays on the plant-plant interactions, this paper focused on the negative interaction (competition). There is another type of plant-plant interactions which is a positive interaction and called (facilitation). I would like to encourage the author to write some thin on this type of interaction in the introduction and can help to justify the positive correlation of wolfberry intercropping.
Response 1: We really appreciate this helpful comment and agree that we lack the description of positive interactions of wolfberry intercropping. Because another paper I am going to submit is about interspecific interactions, in which positive and negative interspecific interactions are written in detail, especially the effect of chemosensitive active substances in root secretions on intercropping of Lycium barbarum. Therefore, this article focuses on the screening and development of Lycium barbarum-forage intercropping patterns, highlighting the role of interspecific competition, and the positive interspecific interactions are not described.
Point 2: Line 415-417: there is no family called Chenopodium but there is a subfamily called Chenopodioideae under the family of Amaranthaceae
Response 1: Thank you very much. We really appreciate this helpful comment and It was really my fault. I'm very sorry for the mistake. I have checked the data to confirm that Mangel, as you say, belong to Chenopodioideae under the family of Amaranthaceae. According to your suggestion, we have changed "Chenopodium" to "Chenopodioideae" throughout the manuscript.
Point 3: Figures 3, 4 are not clear to me, need re-editing.
Response 3: Thanks. We thank the reviewer for their detailed consideration of Figure 3, 4. As suggestion, we have redo Figures 3, 4 (Please see as follows).
We sincerely appreciate the editors and reviewers for their thoughtful comments and recommendations on our manuscript. Those comments are very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guidance to other research. We have studied the comments carefully and have modified the manuscript accordingly. We hope this revised manuscript will meet the journal’s high standards. The main corrections are in the manuscript and the response to the reviewers’ comments are highlighted in red.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments to the Authors
I have reviewed with interest your manuscript entitled „Development of Lycium barbarum-forage intercropping pat-terns” submitted to the future number of Agronomy.
The results showed that wolfberry-forage intercropping LER of greenhouse and field were increased ranged from 29% to 59% and 62% to 170% when compared with monoculture weighted mean, showing significant yield advantages, in particular the wolfberry-mangel, wolfberry-ryegrass, wolfberry-alfalfa and wolfberry- clover perform noticeably well.
In my opinion the current version of your manuscript is suitable for publication in Agronomy, but after small revisions. The quality of the presentation should be improved. In general, manuscript is well written.
There are same grammar mistakes and awkward sentences, that have to be improved.
Some adjustments are suggested to qualify the paper:
Issues include:
The Abstract is written in proper style, but I suggest to add clear aim of the study after few sentences of introduction of Abstract. Moreover the Abstract should not exceed 200 words. Now there is 228 words. In my opinion it can be stay in this version or Authors may a little shorten it.
General comment to the Introduction section: The content of the literature review chapter is related to the research topic. Up-to-date literature references are presented in the manuscript by the author(s).
In the chapter "Materials and Methods", the methodology is adequate.
But I have same question: Why the Authors include only one year of the study?
In the chapter "Results", the results are displayed correctly.
The “Discussion” is informative. Moreover, the Authors attempt to discuss their important results and the rest is a quotation of literature.
The Conclusions are correctly.
Same information are including in the text of Manuscript.
I hope that these comments help you to make an improved version of the manuscript.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Point 1: The Abstract is written in proper style, but I suggest to add clear aim of the study after few sentences of introduction of Abstract. Moreover the Abstract should not exceed 200 words. Now there is 228 words. In my opinion it can be stay in this version or Authors may a little shorten it.
Response 1: Thanks. We appreciate the reviewers comment, and agree that it would be good to simplified these story. I have added the aim of the study and shorten the Abstract with 179 words (Please see as follows).
The intercropping patterns of protected cultivation has been widely used to increase productivity and sustainability in modern agriculture. However, there have been few studies of Wolfberry intercropping which cultivated by clean tillage. Introducing 10 forages into wolfberry cultivation, through land productivity and interspecific competitiveness analysis, screening out the appropriate intercropping mode, to provide scientific basis for wolfberry green cultivation and pasture production. The results showed that wolfberry-forage intercropping Land equivalent ratio (LER) of greenhouse and field were increased ranged from 29% to 59% and 62% to 170% when compared with monoculture weighted mean, showing significant yield advantages (P＜0.05), particularly in wolfberry-mangel, wolfberry-ryegrass, wolfberry-alfalfa and wolfberry- clover. The aggressivity of interspecific competitiveness analysis showed that forage introduction did not affect the dominant competitive position of wolfberry. In addition, wolfberry-forage intercropping could promote monetary advantage index (MAI), and wolfberry-mangel, wolfberry-ryegrass, wolfberry-alfalfa were perform well, with fruit and biomass based on MAI were 827.63, 994.18, 1918.57 and 2106.54, 1706.27, 3103.13, respectively. Finally, wolfberry-mangel, wolfberry-ryegrass and wolfberry-alfalfa were screened out, which can form a new mode of wolfberry and forage production.
Point 2: Why the Authors include only one year of the study?
Response 2: Thanks. We appreciate the reviewers comment, and According to your question, we have reviewed the full text again. It seems that the problems expressed in the article may have caused your doubts. However, all the figures and tables were completed based on the data of 2019, 2020 and 2021. And that's clearly shown in the table 4, 5, 6. The data in the other graphs and tables are an overall response to the 3 years of total data and all include analysis of variance.
We sincerely appreciate the editors and reviewers for their thoughtful comments and recommendations on our manuscript. Those comments are very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guidance to other research. We have studied the comments carefully and have modified the manuscript accordingly. We hope this revised manuscript will meet the journal’s high standards. The main corrections are in the manuscript and the response to the reviewers’ comments are highlighted in red.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
