Organic Manure Significantly Promotes the Growth of Oilseed Flax and Improves Its Grain Yield in Dry Areas of the Loess Plateau of China
, Yuhong Gao 1,2,*, Bing Wu 2,3, Xingbang Ma 1,2, Yifan Wang 1,2, Bin Yan 1,2, Zhengjun Cui 1,2, Ming Wen 1,2, Xue Zhang 1,2 and Haidi Wang 1,2Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Ms. Ref. No.: agronomy-2554674
Title: Organic Manure Significantly Promotes the Growth of Oilseed Flax and Improves Its Grain Yield in Dry Areas of the Loess Plateau of China
Authors: Xingkang Ma, Yuhong Gao*, Bing Wu, Xingbang Ma, Yifan Wang, Bin Yan, Zhengjun Cui, Ming Wen, Xue Zhang, Haidi Wang
Dear reviewer,
We sincerely thank you for taking your valuable time to revise the paper for us and giving us a golden opportunity to revise our manuscript. We appreciate the editor and reviewers very much for the positive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled “Organic Manure Significantly Promotes the Growth of Oilseed Flax and Improves Its Grain Yield in Dry Areas of the Loess Plateau of China” (No. agronomy-2554674).
We appreciate the helpful comments, corrections, and suggestions on our manuscript, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We have studied comments carefully and examined the original manuscript and made many careful modifications according to the comments from the editor and the reviewers. We sincerely hope that the editor and reviewers can be satisfied with our responses. We believe that our work has benefited substantially from the invaluable input of the review team. Below are the details of how we have addressed the review’s comments.
The texts of our responses are marked in red (modifications based on questions from editors and reviewers) font in this file. Revised text was also shown in red font in the revised manuscript file, and the exact line numbers where changes were pointed out in the responses. Attached please find the revised version, which we would like to submit for your kind consideration.
The points-by-points response for the editor and reviewers’ comments are attached the attachment. We would like to express our great appreciation to you and reviewers for comments on our paper. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Xingkang Ma
-----------------------
The detailed responses to reviewers are as following:
Point 1: As organic manure initially provides very slow release of plant nutrients needed at very critical time then how it compensated and even enhanced growth of flax compared with chemical fertilizer. Data on pant and soil nutrients content especially N and C is needed to clarify the release of plant nutrients needed by the crop for higher growth.
Response 1: Thank you for your advice. Our study mainly discussed the effects of organic manure on different agronomic characters and grain formation of oilseed flax, but didn’t involve the analysis of soil nutrient related indexes. The more important role of organic fertilizer are to improve soil biological characteristics, to regulate soil microenvironment, and then affect the growth and development of crops. Many studies in this area (Liu H et al., 2021; Jilkova V et al., 2022; Ding S et al., 2016) have pointed out that the application of organic fertilizer can increase soil organic matter, promote soil carbon and nitrogen mineralization, provide crop available nutrients and meet crop growth in the short term, but continued application may not be able to meet crop demand for available nutrients. The two-year data can not well support the conclusion. In the follow-up study, we will carry out in-depth long-term experiments to clarify the long-term effects of organic manure on crop growth and soil environment. Explore the dynamic changes of carbon, nitrogen and other nutrients in oilseed flax plants and soil after the application of organic manure, and then explain this key problem. In order to solve the problem of the lack of available nutrients of organic manure, we will also consider reducing the amounts of organicmanure on the basis of this experiment, and applying it together with chemical fertilizer to achieve a more scientific way of fertilization for oilseed flax. We are all talking about these points for the last paragraph, mentioned in lines 489-494.
Point 2: Does this study suggest that without any starter dose of chemical fertilizer, organic fertilizer will provide essential nutrients at critical time from very initial growth stage to last stage with net increase in growth and final yield?
Response 2: Thank you for your advice. It should be noted that under our experimental conditions, compared with the non-fertilization control (CK), organic manure increased seed emergence rate (line 187) and dry matter accumulation (line 235), promoted plant growth (line 206; line 213), optimized grain filling characteristics (line 278; line 295), increased grain yield and its components (line318), and provided nutrients for oilseed flax growth from the initial growth stage to the last stage. While compared with the treatment of organic manure and chemical fertilizer, there was no significant difference among different fertilization treatments in the early growth stage of oilseed flax, even chemical fertilizer was better than organic manure, and many indexes of low application amounts treatments of organic manure were not as good as those of chemical fertilizer treatments. Our analysis focuses more on the advantages of organic fertilizer, but ignores the description of the changes of different indexes of flax under chemical fertilizer treatment. In the current study, we have only observed some advantages of organic manure, with the continuation of the experiment, the advantages or disadvantages of applying organic manure will be more clear, which needs to be further explored.
Point 3: Moreover, the rational and hypothesis is missing in the introduction part as huge work is already done on organic manure and chemical fertilizer comparison. Your study must different from the previous work carried out.
Response 3: Thank you for your advice. In the introduction, we have supplemented the significance and assumptions of this study, and expressed the highlights of this experiment. We have made the following changes:
(1) On line 56 added “Therefore, exploring fertilization measures that can improve soil fertility, increase yield and efficiency, and are environmentally friendly is of great significance for sustainable agricultural production in farmland.”;
(2) On line 61 added ”Therefore, how to optimize fertilization measures, to use organic manure instead of chemical fertilizer during the crop production, to improve the planting efficiency and make up for the gap in demand of oilseed flax, and to protect the farmland environment is an urgent problem that needs to be solved.”;
(3) Putting forward the differences between our study and previous studies. On line 76 added “However, previous studies on organic manure replacing chemical fertilizers on flax have mostly focused on aspects such as effects of crop rotation combined with the organic manure on grain yield [17], optimizes water consumption characteristics [18], and improve quality [19], while there are few reports on the study of organic fertilizers on oilseed flax grain filling characteristics in dryland agricultural areas, and the effects of organic manure on grain formation of oilseed flax are not clear.”。
Point 4: What the motive behind sheep and chicken manure and which was is the best and what are the key features and benefits need to be highlighted in abstract and conclusion.
Response 4: Thank you for your advice. The selection of sheep manure and chicken manure as experimental factors is based on the survey results of local commonly used manure, which we mentioned in the experimental design and have supplemented the basis in the discussion. On line 433 added “An et al. [46] investigated the present situation of resource utilization of livestock and poultry manure in Dingxi City, Gansu Province, China, and found that the annual production of sheep manure and chicken manure were as high as 2.539 million t / a and 4.92 million t / a respectively, and suggested that the technology of returning manure to the field should be vigorously popularized, which can not only improve soil fertility, but also save cost and increase yield, and the manure mature technology has been widely used in the local area[47].”
In addition, we further refine the summary and conclusion to describe more clearly the respective advantages of sheep manure and chicken manure.
Point 5: It will be better to use t ha-1for manures instead of kg·hm-2 in the materials and methods if agreed.
Response 5: Thank you for your advice. We have changed the manure unit "kg·hm-2" in the material and method to "t ha-1", and replaced all the places where this unit appears in this article, and the full article units are consistent.
Point 6: In economic analysis, it will be better to SI unit of currency for all readers of globe.
Response 6: Thank you for your advice. For the convenience of readers, we have corrected the economic unit in the article to SI monetary unit "CNY ha-1"
Point 7: Rephrase the sentence 375-376 ‘Khan et al. reported that the seeds treated with organic manure emerged earlier and were more beneficial to the development of plant roots’
Response 7: Thank you for your advice. We have rephrased the sentence on line 362 “Khan et al. reported that the seeds treated with organic manure emerged earlier and were more beneficial to the development of plant roots” to ”Khan et al. reported that the organic manure was more beneficial to seed emergence.”.
Point 8: Any supportive data for the statement reported in line 377 ‘The organic manure could improve soil water and heat conditions to promote maize seed germination’
Response 8: Thank you for your advice. We have restated the sentence as” The organic manure could improve soil water and heat conditions to promote rice seed germination”, and updated the references (Lei R et al., 2022).
Point 9: Change the sentence in line 381 to ‘in the current study on flax’ instead ‘According to the study on flax’ and remove the phrase ‘it was found’
Response 9: Thank you for your advice. We have replaced "According to the study on flax" with "In the current study on flax" in line 368 and deleted "it was found"
Point 10: Line 384, Shorten the sentence ‘In the current study, the application of organic manure effectively increased the emergence rate of oilseed flax-------‘.
Response 10: Thank you for your advice. We have refined the sentence and deleted "the application of organic manure effectively increased the emergence rate of oilseed flax, and".
Point 11: Give reference of Table or figure for Line 390 stated that ‘mature organic manure was rich in organic matter, humus and iron, manganese, boron, and other trace elements.
Response 11: Thank you for your advice. In the overview of the experimental site, in Table 1 of line 94, we have provided data on nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, PH and organic matter. Under the condition of the same nutrient content of different types of fertilizers, we guessed that the reason for the increase of oilsed flax grain yield caused by organic manure might be the trace elements such as iron and manganese et al. contained in it, which was also supported by reference (Saha S, 2019). Therefore, we could not provide more content data of other nutrient elements in organic manure.
Point 12: Line 395, give weather data to support the statement ‘the emergence of seedlings in 2022 was low as 395 a whole, because the soil moisture was generally poor when sowing in that year, which 396 affected the emergence of seedlings.
Response 12: Thank you for your advice. We have supplemented the meteorological data in line 99 of the experimental site, which shows that the soil moisture and precipitation during the whole growth period before and after sowing oilseed flax in 2022 are significantly lower than those in 2021, so the seedling emergence rate and yield are lower as a whole. This well supports our results.
Point 13: Moreover, there were several reference citations issues probably due to software and none of the authors noticed it prior to submission.
Response 13: Thank you for your advice. We are very sorry that our carelessness led to the problem. We have corrected this kind of error and carefully checked the citation format of all references in the article to make sure that the format is correct.
Point 14: Is it grain number per grain or grain number per capsule
Response 14: Thank you for your advice. We have expressed more clearly the names of the elements of flax yield, in which the number of seeds refers to the number of oilseed flax seeds in each capsule.
Point 15: Is the reason is justified that due to release of large amount of ammonia in the soil, germination rates were lowest with chemical fertilizer. As if so then there might be some visible burnt symptom on the emerged seedling. It could be due to some other reason as well like optimal moisture and Temp etc. in this particular treatment. Need to be properly justified and supported by reference.
Response 15: Thank you for your advice. According to our field observation, there was a phenomenon of burning seedlings during seed germination under the treatments of high fertilizer application amounts in the experiment. Therefore, we think that the high amounts of chemical fertilizer treatment leads to the existence of a large amount of free NH3 in the soil, which seriously affects the seed germination and emergence. In addition, the reasons for the low emergence rate may be various, we have referred to some relevant references, and made a supplement in the article to support our results.
On line 379 added ”Factors affecting germination or seedling injury from seed-placed fertilizers include; crop sensitivity, precipitation after seeding, organic matter, soil texture and soil moisture, fertilizer source and rate, et al [29].”;
On line 382 added ”Soil moisture is important to take into account when applying fertilizer directly with the seed, while the significant stand loss as a result of relatively dry soil conditions [30]. Fertilizer sources that cause the highest amount of damage to seedlings are those that release free NH3, especially urea, and a large ion concentration around the roots of crops will move water out of the plant cells, therefore, salt damage from fertilizer is often more severe on dry soils [31].”.
Point 16: How grain number and stem number showed poor relation with final yield. This need to be fully justified as number of grains and stem are very important component of final yield.
Response 16: Thank you for your advice. Plant number (panicle number), grain number and grain weight are the three elements of general crop yield. In this study, we subdivided the oilseed flax grain yield components into a number of indicators, and all the indicators were positively correlated with the yield, indicating that they all made an important contribution to the yield formation. Among them, the number of branches on main stem, the number of effective capsules and 1000-grain weight contributed more, indicating that the application of organic manure promoted the formation of branch number, and the increase of effective capsule number and grain weight. In contrast, the number of seeds of per capsule seems to have little effect, and as far as we know, the oilseed flax plants with more branches have more ineffective capsules on the stems, so the grain yield is mainly affected by the number of effective capsules on the main stem. In addition, we supplemented the correlation analysis between oilseed flax grain yield and its components to further explain. The results showed that under the experimental conditions of this study, the number of seeds of per capsule and stems were positively correlated with grain yield, but not significantly.
Point 17: Remove ‘the’ from dry matter accumulation every where in the manuscript.
Response 17: Thank you for your advice. We have removed “the” from dry matter accumulation every where in the manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript presents a comprehensive description of the effects of organic manure on the properties of oilseed flax. The obtained results are original and interesting.
The abstract is too long, and therefore difficult to read. Please provide only the most important information.
1. Introduction
The following sentence should be expanded:
"However, studies on organic manure use instead of chemical fertilizer use on oilseed flax have mainly focused on improvements in quality and yield, few studies have been performed on the grain filling characteristics and yield, and the effects of organic manure on oilseed flax grain yield are not clear [17,18,19]."
Are there also newer references?
2. Materials and Methods
line 107: Why was this variety chosen? Why only one variety?
3. Results
The results are quite well described. The tables and figures are very clearly presented. However, for some figures, the legend is not properly explained and the figures are difficult to understand.
4. Discussion
line 401: error
Future research and challenges should be identified in more detail.
The conclusions should be more detailed and supported by the results.
Author Response
Title: Organic Manure Significantly Promotes the Growth of Oilseed Flax and Improves Its Grain Yield in Dry Areas of the Loess Plateau of China
Authors: Xingkang Ma, Yuhong Gao*, Bing Wu, Xingbang Ma, Yifan Wang, Bin Yan, Zhengjun Cui, Ming Wen, Xue Zhang, Haidi Wang
Dear reviewer,
We sincerely thank you for taking your valuable time to revise the paper for us and giving us a golden opportunity to revise our manuscript. We appreciate the editor and reviewers very much for the positive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled “Organic Manure Significantly Promotes the Growth of Oilseed Flax and Improves Its Grain Yield in Dry Areas of the Loess Plateau of China” (No. agronomy-2554674).
We appreciate the helpful comments, corrections, and suggestions on our manuscript, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We have studied comments carefully and examined the original manuscript and made many careful modifications according to the comments from the editor and the reviewers. We sincerely hope that the editor and reviewers can be satisfied with our responses. We believe that our work has benefited substantially from the invaluable input of the review team. Below are the details of how we have addressed the review’s comments.
The texts of our responses are marked in red (modifications based on questions from editors and reviewers) font in this file. Revised text was also shown in red font in the revised manuscript file, and the exact line numbers where changes were pointed out in the responses. Attached please find the revised version, which we would like to submit for your kind consideration.
The points-by-points response for the editor and reviewers’ comments are attached the attachment. We would like to express our great appreciation to you and reviewers for comments on our paper. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Xingkang Ma
------------------------------
The detailed responses to reviewers are as following:
Point 1: The abstract is too long, and therefore difficult to read. Please provide only the most important information.
Response 1: Thank you for your advice. We have further condensed the summary, deleted redundant statements, and retained the most important information. We have made the following changes:
(1) Condensed line 17 "sheep manure and chicken manure" into "organic manure";
(2) Delete line 18 " with rates 29.97% and 15.00% higher than that of the chemical fertilizers, respectively. Different fertilizer types and application amounts significantly affected the plant height, stem diameter, and dry matter accumulation (DMA) of oilseed flax, which were increased by 2.00%-18.06%, 7.61%-25.14%, and 2.47%-40.11%, respectively (P＜0.05), under the treatment with 25000 kg·hm-2 sheep manure compared with those under the other treatments. ", and rephrase to "and chicken manure increased plant height and sheep manure was beneficial to thickening. Dry matter accumulation of the 25 t ha-1 sheep manure increased by 2.47%-40.11% compared with that of the other treatments, and it was promoted the distribution ratio of dry matter to grains after anthesis of oilseed flax.";
(3) Delete line 28 " with sheep manure and chicken manure obtaining 9.14% and 4.51% higher GFR than the chemical fertilizer and, on average, 18.63% and 13.60% higher GFR than the control.";
(4) Delete line 33 " and improved the yield components significantly,";
(5) Delete line 35 "A correlation analysis showed that the grain yield of oilseed flax was positively correlated with the number of branches on the main stem, the number of effective capsules, and the 1000-grain weight."
Point 2: Introduction
The following sentence should be expanded: "However, studies on organic manure use instead of chemical fertilizer use on oilseed flax have mainly focused on improvements in quality and yield, few studies have been performed on the grain filling characteristics and yield, and the effects of organic manure on oilseed flax grain yield are not clear [17,18,19]." Are there also newer references?
Response 2: Thank you for your advice. We have referred to some of the latest literature and expanded this sentence to express more clearly the differences between our study and previous work.
On line 76 “However, previous studies on organic manure replacing chemical fertilizers on flax have mostly focused on aspects such as effects of crop rotation combined with the organic manure on grain yield [17], optimizes water consumption characteristics [18], and improve quality [19], while there are few reports on the study of organic fertilizers on oilseed flax grain filling characteristics in dryland agricultural areas, and the effects of organic manure on grain formation of oilseed flax are not clear.”
Point 3: Materials and Methods
line 107: Why was this variety chosen? Why only one variety?
Response 3: Thank you for your advice. Zhangya 2 is an early-maturing oil flax variety with erect seedlings and compact plant type. The population has the advantages of neat and consistent growth, wide adaptability, strong stress resistance and good yield stability, which is suitable for planting in dry land. It is the main variety in the experimental area, so this study takes this variety as the research object, which is representative to some extent. In our later research, we will further study the response of different oilseed flax varieties to organic fertilizer and the regulation effect of organic fertilizer on the quality of different oilseed flax varieties, so as to provide more scientific fertilization management methods for oilseed flax cultivation in dry land.
Point 4: Results
The results are quite well described. The tables and figures are very clearly presented. However, for some figures, the legend is not properly explained and the figures are difficult to understand.
Response 4: Thank you for your advice. We have carefully examined the legend annotations of each figure and made supplementary explanations to make the meaning more clear and clear.
Point 5: Discussion
line 401: error
Future research and challenges should be identified in more detail.
Response 5: Thank you for your advice. We have corrected the error in the citation format of the article and carefully checked the full article to ensure that the format is correct. In addition, we put forward some suggestions and viewpoints on the basis of this experimental conditions, and discussed in more detail the future study direction of organic fertilizer in oilseed flax, as well as more scientific fertilization management in the face of crop growth needs and environmental challenges. We have made the following changes:
(1) In the last paragraph of discussion, on line 484 added ” And only agronomic characteristics were analyzed in this study. Oilseed flax is one of the most important plant sources of essential fatty acid － α-linolenic acid for the human body, and the regulatory effects of organic manure on quality still need to be further explored.”;
(2) On line 489 added “In addition, organic manure often occurs that the manure doesn’t mature completely, and there are hidden dangers such as bacteria, disease, and insect eggs, which result in a certain negative effect on yield. Therefore, further optimization of these fertilization measures，reduction of the amount of organic manure under the conditions of this experiment, and combined with chemical fertilizer application, can not only meet the short-term demand for available nutrients of crops, but also realize the long-term supply of nutrients, it may better meet the growth of crops and the appeal for green environmental protection.”.
Point 6: The conclusions should be more detailed and supported by the result
Response 6: Thank you for your advice. We supplement some experimental results in the conclusion, which well supports the conclusion. We have made the following changes:
(1) On line 497 added “The organic manure effectively ensured the emergence rate of oilseed flax, and chicken manure increased plant height and sheep manure was beneficial to thickening.”;
(2) On line 499 added “the dry matter accumulation was 2.47%-40.11% higher than that of the other treatments,”;
(3) On line 501 added “which were significantly higher, by 14.03%-46.85% and 3.04%-95.07%, respectively, than those of other treatments.”.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Ms. Ref. No.: agronomy-2554674
Title: Organic Manure Significantly Promotes the Growth of Oilseed Flax and Improves Its Grain Yield in Dry Areas of the Loess Plateau of China
Authors: Xingkang Ma, Yuhong Gao*, Bing Wu, Xingbang Ma, Yifan Wang, Bin Yan, Zhengjun Cui, Ming Wen, Xue Zhang, Haidi Wang
Dear reviewer,
We sincerely thank you for taking your valuable time to revise the paper for us and giving us a golden opportunity to revise our manuscript. We appreciate the editor and reviewers very much for the positive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled “Organic Manure Significantly Promotes the Growth of Oilseed Flax and Improves Its Grain Yield in Dry Areas of the Loess Plateau of China” (No. agronomy-2554674).
We appreciate the helpful comments, corrections, and suggestions on our manuscript, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We have studied comments carefully and examined the original manuscript and made many careful modifications according to the comments from the editor and the reviewers. We sincerely hope that the editor and reviewers can be satisfied with our responses. We believe that our work has benefited substantially from the invaluable input of the review team. Below are the details of how we have addressed the review’s comments.
The texts of our responses are marked in red (modifications based on questions from editors and reviewers) font in this file. Revised text was also shown in red font in the revised manuscript file, and the exact line numbers where changes were pointed out in the responses. Attached please find the revised version, which we would like to submit for your kind consideration.
The points-by-points response for the editor and reviewers’ comments are attached the attachment. We would like to express our great appreciation to you and reviewers for comments on our paper. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Xingkang Ma
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript has been improved
Author Response
Ms. Ref. No.: agronomy-2554674
Title: Organic Manure Significantly Promotes the Growth of Oilseed Flax and Improves Its Grain Yield in Dry Areas of the Loess Plateau of China
Authors: Xingkang Ma, Yuhong Gao*, Bing Wu, Xingbang Ma, Yifan Wang, Bin Yan, Zhengjun Cui, Ming Wen, Xue Zhang, Haidi Wang
Dear reviewer,
We sincerely thank you for taking your valuable time to revise the paper for us and giving us a golden opportunity to revise our manuscript. We appreciate the editor and reviewers very much for the positive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled “Organic Manure Significantly Promotes the Growth of Oilseed Flax and Improves Its Grain Yield in Dry Areas of the Loess Plateau of China” (No. agronomy-2554674).
We appreciate the helpful comments, corrections, and suggestions on our manuscript, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We have studied comments carefully and examined the original manuscript and made many careful modifications according to the comments from the editor and the reviewers. We sincerely hope that the editor and reviewers can be satisfied with our responses. We believe that our work has benefited substantially from the invaluable input of the review team.
We would like to express our great appreciation to you and reviewers for comments on our paper. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Xingkang Ma
