Chemical Fertilizer Reduction Combined with Biochar Application Ameliorates the Biological Property and Fertilizer Utilization of Pod Pepper

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is very interesting and makes an important contribution to the use of biochar with a reduction in the use of mineral fertilizers.
The work is well written and discusses the main results, except one which is the increase in yield with the reduction in the use of fertilizers up to 70%. The data indicate an inhibition of yield at the highest doses of mineral fertilizer and this needs to be discussed. One of the possibilities that can be considered is the toxicity of ammonia with the following mechanics: the applied nitrogen fertilizer may have been in ammoniacal form and this needs to be informed in the material and methods; biochar may have inhibited nitrification, which is supported by the literature; the combination of these two facts may have led to toxic levels of ammonia for the plants. With the reduction in N application, toxicity would cease to occur.
I would also like to say that figures and tables should be self-explanatory, to be more friendly to the reader, who would not have to resort to the text to understand the abbreviations.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking your time to review this manuscript and give us another chance to revise the manuscript. We will cherish the opportunity of this revision. ​Your comments make this paper completer and more outstanding! I really appreciate all your comments and suggestions! Please find my itemized responses in below and my revisions/corrections in the re-submitted files. Thanks again. 1. The work is well written and discusses the main results, except one which is the increase in yield with the reduction in the use of fertilizers up to 70%. The data indicate an inhibition of yield at the highest doses of mineral fertilizer and this needs to be discussed. One of the possibilities that can be considered is the toxicity of ammonia with the following mechanics: the applied nitrogen fertilizer may have been in ammoniacal form and this needs to be informed in the material and methods; biochar may have inhibited nitrification, which is supported by the literature; the combination of these two facts may have led to toxic levels of ammonia for the plants. With the reduction in N application, toxicity would cease to occur. Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have supplemented the forms of N in fertilizers in the materials and methods, and provided relevant explanations during the discussion. 2. I would also like to say that figures and tables should be self-explanatory, to be more friendly to the reader, who would not have to resort to the text to understand the abbreviations. Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have modified some of the figures and tables to make them more friendly to readers.

Reviewer 2 Report

In this paper, the authors represent the potential of biochar as a substitute for chemical fertilizers via two-year field experiments carried out to study the effect of chemical fertilizer reduction combined with biochar application on the yield, quality, nutrient accumulation, fertilizer utilization, and economic benefits of pod pepper in southwest China, and to evaluate the optimal ratio of biochar to replace chemical fertilizers.

I found this work interesting for publication in its field. Still, apart from minor corrections to the English language, I would suggest the authors explain in more detail the origin of the distillers' grains and in which mode of pyrolysis (specific time and conditions) the subject biochar have been obtained.

 

 Minor editing of English language required.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking your time to review this manuscript and give us another chance to revise the manuscript. We will cherish the opportunity of this revision. ​Your comments make this paper completer and more outstanding! I really appreciate all your comments and suggestions! Please find my itemized responses in below and my revisions/corrections in the re-submitted files. Thanks again. 1. I found this work interesting for publication in its field. Still, apart from minor corrections to the English language, I would suggest the authors explain in more detail the origin of the distillers' grains and in which mode of pyrolysis (specific time and conditions) the subject biochar have been obtained. Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have invited experts whose native language is English to make modifications to the English language. Thank you. Meanwhile, we have added information on the sources of distiller's grains and methods for preparing biochar in the section of "2.2 Experimental Material".

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, i read with interest the manuscript " Chemical Fertilizer Reduction Combined with Biochar Application Ameliorates the Biological Property and Fertilizer Utilization of Pod Pepper". With regret i have to said that are present a lot of mistake to be cleared before the publication of the article. Please follow the comment reported on the pdf and answer point by point on the comment. I have serious doubt on the statistics because looking the results (mean +- error) it seems that there are no differences between some treatment. Major revision have to be address. Good luck

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Nothing to declare

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking your time to review this manuscript and give us another chance to revise the manuscript. We will cherish the opportunity of this revision. ​Your comments make this paper completer and more outstanding! I really appreciate all your comments and suggestions! Please find my itemized responses in below and my revisions/corrections in the re-submitted files. Thanks again. 1. Abstract reduce, the maximum word count is 200, here are 266. Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have revised the abstract section to meet the requirements. 2. Find different keywords, the large part are the same of the title. Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have rewritten the keywords. 3. I suggest the authors to modify or completely remove this part, it's a lot of data that is not very important. Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have removed the irrelevant parts 4. Add this references because it's relevant and a new outcomes of the using of biochar for restore toxic soil. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-022-24127-w Thank you very much for providing the references. We have added the reference to the manuscript. 5. In which way? Please add some information because it's the topic of the article. Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have revised this sentence to make it more relevant to the topic. 6. This part are other outcomes of the use of biochar, but are not the focus of the research. I suggest the authors to remove and expand the previous part, like the comment above. Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have removed irrelevant content, and added research studies related to the topic of the article. 7. Which % of application? Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have supplemented the application rate of biochar. 8. Do a table whit the carachteristics. Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have presented the relevant data in a table. 9. Do a similiar table, consider to insert only one table with all the charateristics Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have presented the relevant data in a table. 10. What is the characteristics? Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have supplemented the main components of chemical fertilizers, especially nitrogen forms. 11. Explain this part, when are applied this product? Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have revised this sentence. 12. Write the full name of the parameters and the method use for the determination. Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have added the full name of the parameters, and supplemented the method use for the determination 13. Why double percentage? Please clarify everywhere. Thank you very much for your suggestion. Since the fresh pepper yield of the CK treatment was very low, while the fresh pepper yield of the chemical fertilizer combined with biochar treatment was high (e.g., the pepper yield of the CF70B treatment was 2.36 times higher than the pepper yield of the CK treatment). Therefore, the rate of yield increase would be more than 100%. Similarly, a similar situation will occur in the sections of "3.3 Nutrient accumulation" and "3.4 Fertilizer utilization" sections. 14. How it's possible this statistics? the error seems that there is no differences between this value. especially from CF to CF60B. Thank you very much for your suggestion. We are very sorry that we have mislabeled the ANOVA results due to our mistake. We have corrected the error. 15. This is introduction, remove. Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have removed the irrelevant parts. 16. This are results, not discussion. remove. Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have removed the irrelevant parts.