Fruit Crop Species with Agrivoltaic Systems: A Critical Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. The installation methods of solar panels in different fruit tree planting environments should be summarized separately, and representative photos and diagrams should be provided.

2. Section 3.2 should be divided into two parts, namely the beneficial effects on fruit tree growth and the adverse effects on fruit tree growth.

3. The conclusion section is too simplistic and should analyze the trend of applying AV technology in agriculture, as well as its impact on mechanized operations.

Author Response

Reviewer #1

1. The installation methods of solar panels in different fruit tree planting environments should be summarized separately, and representative photos and diagrams should be provided.

 

2. Section 3.2 should be divided into two parts, namely the beneficial effects on fruit tree growth and the adverse effects on fruit tree growth.

 

3. The conclusion section is too simplistic and should analyze the trend of applying AV technology in agriculture, as well as its impact on mechanized operations.

 

 

 

Author's Reply to the Review Report:

1. Dear Reviewer, thank you for your suggestions to improve the paragraph. In the latest extended version of the ms more information has been inserted on this aspect, a comprehensive diagram and three examples on the same crop but with different agrivoltaics system have been also described. Summarization into small paragraph it’s extremely difficult due to scarce bibliographic information available, and the new data have been added in the existing paragraphs. I hope that the effort it will be appreciated.

 

2. As reported above, due to the low number of studies conducted on fruit species, we have reported the main effects described for such species in a single paragraph, mainly focusing on yield and yield components together with some physiological aspects.

 

3. The Conclusion has been deeply revised taking into account the suggestion of the reviewer. Despite the high relevance, the impact of mechanization in fruit orchards in agrivoltaic systems is not investigated at all.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

As a review, the manuscript is relatively rough in details and contents and lack of information. For example, while talking about the climate under the panels, the light environment, should be the most important parameter, as well as the wind velocity and so on, not only the temperature and humidity. These parameters above are also changes depending on the design of the panels, different locations and seasons. On the other hand, the yield of the panels should be also mentioned, the system took a lot of light energy after all, and if it is worth the decreasing if the crops should be discussed.

Author Response

Reviewer #2

 

As a review, the manuscript is relatively rough in details and contents and lack of information. For example, while talking about the climate under the panels, the light environment, should be the most important parameter, as well as the wind velocity and so on, not only the temperature and humidity. These parameters above are also changes depending on the design of the panels, different locations and seasons. On the other hand, the yield of the panels should be also mentioned, the system took a lot of light energy after all, and if it is worth the decreasing if the crops should be discussed.

 

 

 

Author's Reply to the Review Report

Dear Reviewer, thank you for your precious suggestions to improve the ms. Details have been added on light, wind and the ongoing scientific investigation about microclimatic parameters. We have preferred to talk about light modelling, decomposition (PAR diffuse and direct) and quali-quantitative assessment in the first paragraph and some insertions on these aspects have been placed all over the body of the manuscript. About the energy yield, we have reported some specifications on different configurations highlighting seasonality, percentage yield of almost all configurations and alghoritm that optimize light capture (backtracking, foldable one). Comments are also inserted within the conclusion paragraph due to their relevance on fruit crop suitability. We hope that this revised version would be better appreciated by the reviewer.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I raise the following comments regarding the manuscript: 

Comment 1:

More references should be given 'since it's a review article'

Comment 2:

figure 2, it must be redone

Comment 3:

why did you not take into consideration the studies of countries with semi-arid or arid climates?

 

Author Response

Reviewer #3:

I raise the following comments regarding the manuscript:

Comment 1: More references should be given 'since it's a review article'

Comment 2: figure 2, it must be redone

Comment 3: why did you not take into consideration the studies of countries with semi-arid or arid climates?

 

 

 

Author's Reply to the Review Report

 

Dear Reviewer, thank you for the suggestions to improve the ms.

 

Comment 1: In the latest extended version more references have been inserted.

Comment 2: The figure 2 has been redone in a more correct way.

Comment 3: We have inserted some studies conducted on fruit crops under these climatic conditions, although studies are still limited in such areas. However, we have addressed some considerations to enhance research activities in these climatic conditions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The MS titles “Fruit crop species for agrivoltaic systems: state of the art” is well written and provides significant beneficiary information. The authors are basically tried to accumulate Agrivoltic information with emphasize on fruit crops. They discuss about engineering modeling, crop plantation, and the effects of PV panels installation on orchard microenvironment and crop production, which will be a good resource. However, I want to see a statistic about how much orchard land in a particular area i.e. USA or Italy, and if we can use the land without affection the production, how many AV can be produced. Another thing is if a section is added describing some major fruit plant physiology/agronomy, for example some fruit crop (i.e. Fig) need full bright sun others can be okay under relatively less sunlight; other thing can be included here is plant growth physiology, for example, grape vine is grown in rows that usually has relatively empty canopy, similar to blueberry where PV shade can be managed. Here, what I am trying to make is, if a section discussing the issue I talked just above will increase the readability of the article significantly because the main focus is on fruit crop.  I leave some comment on the original PDF.  Good luck!!

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer #4

 

The MS titles “Fruit crop species for agrivoltaic systems: state of the art” is well written and provides significant beneficiary information. The authors are basically tried to accumulate Agrivoltic information with emphasize on fruit crops. They discuss about engineering modeling, crop plantation, and the effects of PV panels installation on orchard microenvironment and crop production, which will be a good resource. However, I want to see a statistic about how much orchard land in a particular area i.e. USA or Italy, and if we can use the land without affection the production, how many AV can be produced. Another thing is if a section is added describing some major fruit plant physiology/agronomy, for example some fruit crop (i.e. Fig) need full bright sun others can be okay under relatively less sunlight; other thing can be included here is plant growth physiology, for example, grape vine is grown in rows that usually has relatively empty canopy, similar to blueberry where PV shade can be managed. Here, what I am trying to make is, if a section discussing the issue I talked just above will increase the readability of the article significantly because the main focus is on fruit crop.  I leave some comment on the original PDF.  Good luck!!

 

 

 

Author's Reply to the Review Report

Dear Reviewer, thank you so much for the appreciation of our manuscript. In the latest revised version of the manuscript we have fixed these aspects and solved all the comments pointed out. Physiological aspects are now better emphasized within the new paragraphs and more information added on fruit crops.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. I can't locate the revised contents in the manuscript.

2. In last review I gave the authors  an typical example of the issues exist in the manuscript, not the only issue. I read the manuscript again and still found it hard to get a clear and concise impression about the development status of PV in agricultural applications. In my opinion, the authors should add more details for each statement, not only just claim ambiguously that A "have great impact" on B, or A "affected"B.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, in this new revised ms all the changes are now in tracking mode. We tried also to add new details to improve the general reading of the manuscript about the application of agrivoltaics for fruit tree species.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author did not consider the comment properly and it was difficult to know where they change in the manuscript. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, in this new revised version of the ms we made all the changes in tracking mode. We also inserted information about the land used for agrivoltaics in some countries. We also inserted a new table focusing on physiological and agronomical aspects of some fruit species in the appendix of the revise ms and better discussed about this aspect in the text of the ms.