Cape Verde (West Africa) Successful Water Reuse Pilot Project: A Sustainable Way for Increasing Food Production in a Climate Change Scenario
, Juan Ramón Fernández-Vera 2, Gilbert Duarte Silva 3, Angelo Semedo-Varela 4 and MarÃa del Pino Palacios-DÃaz 1,*,†Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The title is too long
West Africa does not imply an island
A map of the island and the location will be welcome
The English is defective, needs a revision, including spelling. The writing is too complicated
All places should be named in the same way: affiliations of the authors
What happens with the contribution of the other authors?
Several explanations of basic things are not necessary
The wording is not the usual in the field
Several weak points (examples)
- 36-38: difficult writing
- 40-41: not clear if the figures correspond to evaporation or precipitation
- 46-48 refers to Cape Verde?
- 49: RCP 2.6 scenario?
- 119-120: the traditional seeding mode was sowed…???
- 118-124: nonsense
- 131: based on water availability?
- 153: head or line?
- 178: mature lagoon?
- 65: … agricultural water withdrawal represents 90.1 % of water withdrawal!
- 68: … the infiltration of seawater are high
- 71-74: difficult to understand
- 74: where is the “)”
- 82: increases?
- 90: treatment or quality?
- 96-97: nonsense
- L: 113-117: Improve the description
- 119-120: The traditional seeding mode was sowed…
- 133 syntax
- 135-136. Not understandable
- 153: uv or UV?
- 190: Entisol soil?
- 230: what is a mature lagoon?
- And so on
Some list of figures can be substituted by Tables.
It is not necessary to explain what drip irrigation is. This is common knowledge
The paper needs order and putting thongs were expected (e.g. materials and methods mix a lot of things without a logical order
The brand new EU regulation is not considered, nor any other rule
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Thank you
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Review of manuscript WATER-917339, entitled “West Africa (Cape Verde) successful water reuse pilot project: a sustainable way for increasing food production in a climate change scenario” by V. Mendoza-Grimón, J.R. Fernández-Vera, G.D. Silva, A.S. Varela, and M.P. Palacios-Díaz.
This paper describes results from a field experiment where non-conventional waters from wastewater treatment plants were used for maize sub-surface irrigation in Santiago Island, Cape Verde. Cape Verde is one of the most susceptible countries to climate change, and there is an urgent need to cope with water scarcity. This provide the framework for this study. The topic is thus relevant. However, the results show serious flaws that make me suggest the study to be rejected for publication in WATER. One of the most relevant flaws is that soil salinity risks were not termly evaluated at the end of the irrigation treatment (authors show only results from May to July). There is thus great risk of salinity buildup in their experiment that authors are not addressing.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
West Africa (Cape Verde) successful water reuse pilot project: a sustainable way for increasing food production in a climate change scenario
The topic of the manuscript is very interesting and of great actuality as circular economy solution. The results should be presented in a more clear way and the discussion should be more clear and organized. For these reasons my opinion is that the paper is suitable for the publication in the journal after minor revisions.
I’m adding some specific comments as follows hoping that they could be useful for authors.
Title: I would suggest to keep only Cape Verde without parenthesis and West Africa
Abstract
Line 20-21: “Improving irrigation water use”… you can add also the use of “non- conventional water”
Line 25: please correct suBsurface
Line 27 please consider to use “train the farmers and increase their awareness”
Keywords: please consider to reduce the keywords number. You could delete: “climate change”, “sustainable food production”, that are already in the title. And also “water management” that could be included under “precision irrigation” concept.
Introduction
This section is very complete and well structured, but it is too long. I would suggest to revise it and make it shorter.
Line 39 WorLd
Line 45: please uniform Cabo Verde or Cape Verde along the text
Line 56 here and all along the text: please delete “data from” in the parenthesis of the references
Line 63: 32000 haS
Line 69 groundwater QUALITY and availability
Line 135-136 it is not clear to me why did you change the irrigation treatment T1 and T2 between the 2019 and 2020
Fig 2: please add the letter A, B on the top of the figures
Line 205-206: this information should be moved under results section
Table 2 it is not easy to understand. I would suggest to present the data in a graph in order to better show the trend along the months.
Line 259. Please try to justify this phenomenon.
Line 271: in order to better understand the results of all mineral elements, do you have manure analysis?
Line 283 “Fresh plant weight was not significantly different between 2019 and 2020 harvests (date)” : maybe the dates are missing. In addition you should add between T1 and T2. How did you explain that no differences occurred even if in 2020 irrigation stopped for 14 days?
Figure 3. why there is so high variability in the first date and no whiskers for the second date?
Table 3: it is not easy to understand. I would suggest to present the data in a graph in order to better show the results.
Lines 296-300 Please try to explain better.
Lines
Table 4 it should be better to compare these results with plants irrigated with freshwater.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear authors,
The paper is ready for publishing in the current form.
Only the tables have to be adapted to the rules of the journal.
Best regards.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer: Thank you for your comments. AS you requested, new tables have been created following the rules of the journal.
Best Regards
Here we upload the new version including the new tables
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The English of the paper is still defective and is creating confusion in several parts of it
Several desciptions should be improved and repetitions appear
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you for your comments
Editing of English language and style have been done again.
Best regards
Reviewer 2 Report
Authors were not able to modify the paper to accommodate my earlier comment. For that my decision remains the same. Instead, authors found best to question the Reviewer’s competence in evaluating this manuscript. I’m not sure how that will ever work on their favor. Personally, I don’t take the hit, but it is something authors should definitely avoid in future submissions.
The fact is that the use of non-conventional waters in irrigation requires improved water management practices not only due to pathogen risk to human health but also due to the risk of soil salinization. This is especially relevant in this study due to the climatic characteristics of Cape Verde as well as the EC of the irrigation water, classified as having a very high salinity risk according to the US Salinity Laboratory Staff (1954) guidelines.
Based on that risk, authors should have monitored the evolution of soil salinity in detail and not stick to general rules of thumb like those given in the reply. As it is now, the study is not interesting enough to be read by WATER readers. Why would an incomplete study be of any interest to a national audience anyway?
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you for your comments but we don't agree with some aspects.
Best regards
