Morphological and Physiological Response of Tomato to Sole and Combined Application of Vermicompost and Chemical Fertilizers
, Jing Ju 1,2,*, Haitao Zhao 1,2, Saleem Maseeh Bhatti 3, Gulnaz Saleem 4, Saima Parveen Memon 2, Shahzaib Ali 5, Muhammad Usama Younas 6, Nimra Rajput 6 and Zameer Hussain Jamali 7Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Research on the application of vermicomposts in order to reduce the use of doses of mineral fertilizers is, in my opinion, up-to-date and interesting. They concern the cultivation of the tomato, which is a valuable vegetable present in the daily diet.
Row 113-114. Total nitrogen, available phosphorus, available potassium…… It does not result from Table 1 that such forms of ingredients have been marked.
Since the assimilable forms of phosphorus and potassium in manure and vermicomposts were marked, were the mineral forms of nitrogen also marked?
Row 184. Mg was determined by atomic absorption spectrophotometer. The name of the analytical technique should be given, not the apparatus on which the analysis was performed.
Row 495. There is no such term as „acidic pH”.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Editor and Authors, the manuscript is interesting, but there are some points (below) that need to be reviewed before the article is considered for publication, so I recommend major revisions.
- Line 49-54, this information is not correct, as the inappropriate use of mineral fertilizers that can cause losses, and also depending on the organic residue there can be a high load of metals that can harm plant growth and its use in agriculture, please rephrase the writing to make this clear.
- Line 55-77 – Paragraph too long, information should be more concise, plus a lot of information is provided without being referenced.
- Line 78-92 – the hypothesis comes before the aims, as the aims are proposed based on the authors' hypothesis.
- Line 103- more information on vermicompost 2 production to be provided
- HERE IS A KEY POINT!!!!! - The authors need to calculate the NPK inputs of the analyzed treatments, and correlate this with the production, since the observed effect may be the greater supply of nutrients and not necessarily the source used, if so, it could simply increase the dose of nutrients and not use organic fertilizers. Also how did the authors control for the effects of micronutrients? Since there was no application of micronutrients in the mineral fertilizers, and since the vermicomposts have micronutrients, the observed effects may come from the application of micronutrients, the authors need the complete micronutrient characterization of the vermicomposts, and in addition, they need to calculate the input of the micronutrients as well. micronutrients, as it may be that the effect is due to this, but the authors will only know after the characterization and the calculated input! –This effect is highlighted in line 326-327 by the authors themselves.
- The standard error in table 4 is higher than the observed means, how can you explain this? For me there is a typo here, please check this!
- There are errors in the legend of the figures, in relation to the letters of the statistical tests “REF”
- Discussion paragraphs are long, need to be more concise and informative, authors need to discuss their results. The discussion is too long, so relevant information is lost in the text.
- The conclusion is well done.
Author Response
Please find the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
