Predictive Capacity of Rainfall Data to Estimate the Water Needs of Fruit Plants in Water Deficit Areas
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have satisfactorily responded to the comments and improved the manuscript. Thank you.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for reviewing our manuscript.
Yours faithfully,
Authors
Reviewer 2 Report
Comentários
Very significant changes and improvements are included in this new version. Most of them answer adequately to antecedent review comments.
Yet the text requires further review. Some paragraphs are not totally clear, reference and potential evaporation methods are not always clear, multiple precipitation periods are mentioned and compared - not wrongly but making text hard to follow. Some paragraphs should be rephrased so they can be clearer.
Repeated figures and some paragraphs are to long. Some results could be presented as graphs. Additionally, the following remarks are described:
- L322 mention monthly precipitation - there could be a graph or table referencing the monthly average values which is highly relevant to understand the risk for the crops
- What is alfa in Table 1?
- Table 1 should mention these are average k values (not specific for plant growth stages)
- Introduction is much better and is quite complete in terms of the topic addressed in the paper; it also shows author's knowledge on these topics
- L 87-88 : please reference or indicate source for presented values.
- L 100 : please indicate source for 78%...
- L 124 : Define growing season
- L126: April-September period is mentioned; how it relates to growing season?
- L 130: Climate change reference?
- L 164: Reference missing
- L 175: town and cities are hardly relevant to mention at this point.
- L 209: Please be more specific - high has no meaning for different realities from Poland
- L 258: Several methods are identified for ETo - which is described as REFERENCE evapotranspiration. Please check thoroughly which are for POTENTIAL and for REFERENCE evapotranspiration.
Please check along the text if REFERENCE evapotranspiration is always correctly referred to as REFERENCE is not the same as POTENTIAL evaporation.
- L 280 Reference for Treder
- L 300 and 302 have repeated idea or phrase.
- L 322 Define low precipitation - relative evaluation
- L 326-327 Average monthly temp and precip could be presented
- L 328-336 Map of isohyets could be presented at this point or latter in the results
- L 337-344 Not clear how to relate with reference evapotranspiration (ETo)
- L 358 alfa is not described nor referenced
- L 360-364 Shouldn’t be limited as N >=0, are negative values accepted or equation 3 only valid for ETp >= P
- L 373 Check if it is Reference Evapotranspiration
- L 388 Refence missing
- L 400 Describe limits for the equation if P<Po
- L 406 Describe average temperatures
- L 424 Figure 1 includes 2 graphs
- L 426 Define growing season for Figure 1
- L 427-436 Multiple periods are mentioned for averaging precipitation; it hard to address these values with some many periods. Please be more clear or use comparable periods - also, monthly precipitation is not presented as suggested before (1, 17).
- L 447-448 Check grammar.
- L 460-461 Repeated Figure
- L 479 Suggestion: graph with average monthly results presented in tables 4 and 5.
- L 526-553 These equations are Methods
- L 590 Repeated figure
- L 645 Clarify "above"
- L 657 Repeated figure.
- L 717 Minimize how? Maybe access risk...
- L 721-722 Rephrase.
- L 729-730 Describe "service" before.
- Conclusions: not clear if the described service, already existing, includes or not the presented results; if yes that should be clear and it is not; if No then something is unclear in these conclusions.
- Conclusion terminate with an existing service for which the relation with the authors and presented work is unclear. This should be clarified.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your invaluable help in improving our manuscript. We responded to all the Reviewer's comments. We have thoroughly revised our manuscript. We tidied up all the chapters and improved the Tables and Figures. All changes are highlighted using the "Track Changes" function in Microsoft Word.
Yours faithfully,
Authors
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
first of all thank you so much for this contribution as well as for the effort.
The manuscript still requires an improvement. The text seems a bit confused and too many information are included. The manuscript is too long and it is desultory .
please, in attachment you find more details.
Best regards
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Thank you very much for your invaluable help in improving our manuscript. We responded to all the Reviewer's comments. We have thoroughly revised our manuscript. We tidied up all the chapters and improved the Tables and Figures. As suggested, we changed the title and significantly shortened the manuscript. The Material and Methods chapter has been supplemented so that the research methodology is understandable. In the conclusions, however, we decided to mention a certain tendency of increasing water needs of studied plants, as we believe that this is an important observation. All changes are highlighted using the "Track Changes" function in Microsoft Word.
Yours faithfully,
Authors
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
|
The authors have studied three techniques and their suitability for forecasting water needs of fruits that are grown in water deficit areas in Poland. The study area is more relevant and important because the amount of irrigation will greatly depend on the plant growth and yield in water deficit areas. The authors have reasonably explained the experimental process. However, the three methods they’ve experimented is not clearly specified. Further, the references related to these three methods are not given in Lines 17-18. Therefore, I would suggest to reorganise the abstract in order to improve the clarity of the paragraph. The authors have indicated the importance of their study for irrigation management in Poland cities. Overall, the paper has structured well and analysed the data appropriately to meet the targets. However, I would like to provide few more comments regarding this paper.
|
Author Response
Responses to comments by Review 1.
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for reviewing the manuscript. We sincerely appreciate the time and effort expended on our behalf. We tried to use all the comments from the reviewer to improve our manuscript.
We would like to report that three methods by which the water requirements of fruit plants were evaluated have been clearly defined and characterized.
Editorial corrections have been made, per the Reviewer's comments and suggestions.
Additionally, the reference list has been reviewed in detail to ensure that it is fully consistent with the references included in the paper itself.
Reviewer 2 Report
Paper intends to present methods and results regarding the estimation of water needs, in a region of Poland, for the following fruits apple, pear, cherry and plums. The general idea is to assess and compare water deficits during the vegetation period of these fruits, for which alternative methods are implemented.
The introduction of the text does mention several relevant issues regarding water balances and potential deficits in Poland but the approach is rather general and does not show evidence of innovation, apart from the actual calculations and results presented. Based on references, some values for precipitation and evapotranspiration are presented but these are quite general.
No maps or other adequate geographical description or references are presented so no study site is adequately described.
Multiple authors and methods are mentioned although at this point description is quite general.
Under Materials and Methods study site location is textually described but the description is quite minimal - no productivity, areas, economical relevance, irrigation infrastructures…
At this point 2 equations for evapotranspiration are presented, based on references and according to which these are adequate for use in Poland (empirically developed). Also the FAO method for irrigation needs estimation is described although using a different reference. A 3rd method for evapotranspiration is also mentioned although not described.
Presented results area quite general and lack detail. These generally demonstrate the existence of water deficits for each of the analysed fruits, and a year by year analysis is presented with graphs, based on precipitation analysis and cultural evapotranspiration results. No statistical analysis is performed and hydrological years or seasons are also not characterized (as dry or wet).
In conclusion, the paper show no innovative processes and methods used are well stablished for quite some time. Results, although with some practical relevance, are in sufficiently supported and described.
Along the text some relevant errors can be found although these situations could be corrected by means of a thorough revision. Also some authors are not adequately referenced.
Based on all the analysis, as it is the paper is recommended for rejection.
Based on the potential relevance of the results from this study, the authors are encouraged to improve the work description and provide better characterization of study area, methods, input data and results. For this purpose the text requires a total remake.
Author Response
The responses to comments by Reviewer 2.
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for reviewing the manuscript. We sincerely appreciate the time and effort expended on our behalf. We tried to respond to all of the Reviewer's comments and include them in the manuscript.
The introduction has been revised based on the comments and suggestions of the Reviewers to provide a broad overview of how plant water needs are determined by various methods.
As suggested by the Reviewers, effective multi-year precipitation has been mentioned as well. The latter supports the growth and development of fruit crops, and most importantly, help fruit growers decide whether to apply supplemental irrigation.
The period of the applied calculations of fruit plant water needs included in the manuscript was extended to include 2 additional years of research and field observations, i.e. to a period of 31 years.
The most optimal and generally available yet simple method of estimating rainfall deficit and fruit plant water supply for use in irrigation practices has been selected and suggested as well. It will make it possible to significantly simplify the irrigation schedule for fruit plants and optimise water resource use in the water-scarce Great Valley Belt area of Poland.
A way of using the method proposed during the growing-irrigation season, both now and in the future, has been provided as well.
Based on a multi-year sequence of calculations, the authors have recommended a method to allow fruit growers' to make better decisions about managing orchard irrigation.
Future scenarios determining precipitation amounts or projected water needs, e.g. based on historical data, were not explicitly indicated, as this was not what the paper aims to achieve. Plant water requirements – not only for fruit plants – are well known and have been predicted by many researchers.
Based on the Reviewers' suggestion, a statistical analysis of the results obtained from the three methods used was performed.
The paper has also been renamed – its title expresses the nature of the problem of determining water requirements and the aim of the research undertaken instead of focusing mainly on predicting fruit plant water requirements.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
overall the manuscript is pretty interesting, but it present such weakness. Personally, the methodology proposed here should contribute to predict crop water requirements along a future irrigation seasons. the methods used are based on precipitation and climate variables which makes it too empirical. personally, i think the rainfall may not satisfactory the real water needs, because it is not enough to cover the entire water requirement along a vegetation season.
But in semi-arid and arid contexts this methodology assumes a robust consistency because it could be a tool to decide how distribute the water collected by water harvesting practices for rainfed agriculture. with this philosophy, the method acquires worth whereas further results are proposed and related them to the forecast scenarios.
It kindly suggests the authors to make more robust the results and discussion sections proposing a comparison between the precipitation deficits estimated by the three optimal precipitation models and the water requirements supplied by irrigation practices, at least for a few years, that would allow to calibrate the models. once one or more models used here are calibrated at that point the authors can suggest the methodology to forecast water requirements.
From my point of view, it misses the relevance to apply this technique.
Please, the authors also improve the terminology and argue the results.
However, more details are refereed in the attached pdf file.
Thank you so much for your research contribution.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
The responses to comments by Reviewer 3.
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your extremely insightful review. It contained very valuable comments for us and allowed us to significantly improve our manuscript. In line with the review, we tried to respond to all of the Reviewer's comments and include them in the manuscript.
The introduction has been revised based on the comments and suggestions of the Reviewers to provide a broad overview of how plant water needs are determined by various methods.
As suggested by the Reviewers, effective multi-year precipitation has been mentioned as well. The latter supports the growth and development of fruit crops, and most importantly, help fruit growers decide whether to apply supplemental irrigation.
The period of the applied calculations of fruit plant water needs included in the manuscript was extended to include 2 additional years of research and field observations, i.e. to a period of 31 years.
The most optimal and generally available yet simple method of estimating rainfall deficit and fruit plant water supply for use in irrigation practices has been selected and suggested as well. It will make it possible to significantly simplify the irrigation schedule for fruit plants and optimise water resource use in the water-scarce Great Valley Belt area of Poland.
A way of using the method proposed during the growing-irrigation season, both now and in the future, has been provided as well.
Based on a multi-year sequence of calculations, the authors have recommended a method to allow fruit growers' to make better decisions about managing orchard irrigation.
Future scenarios determining precipitation amounts or projected water needs, e.g. based on historical data, were not explicitly indicated, as this was not what the paper aims to achieve. Plant water requirements – not only for fruit plants – are well known and have been predicted by many researchers.
Based on the Reviewers' suggestion, a statistical analysis of the results obtained from the three methods used was performed.
The paper has also been renamed – its title expresses the nature of the problem of determining water requirements and the aim of the research undertaken instead of focusing mainly on predicting fruit plant water requirements.
