Biodiversity of Weeds in Fields of Grain in South-Eastern Poland
, Barbara Krochmal-Marczak 2,*, Piotr Barbaś 3, Piotr Pszczółkowski 4 and Marek Ćwintal 1Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I found the work interesting. It provides data on a current topic such as the conservation of biodiversity in agriculture. However, I understand that it can be improved. Regarding the form, there are typographical errors, incorrect references in the bibliography or that are not contemplated in the text, repeated phrases, ... As for the substance, it is a work based on the monitoring of 5 farms. Is it enough for biodiversity studies? As stated in the article, shouldn't this work at the landscape level? No mention is made of the production of the fields, in this way it cannot be deduced if the infesting flora really behaves like weeds. This seems important to us because it seems that, in article, any individual that appears in the interior of the field is considered weed, when in fact it must be present in a sufficient density to cause a decrease in the harvest. In the discussion there is little debate about the importance of the values obtained from the Shanon and Simpson indices. It is indicated that they are time consuming indexes but no evaluation has been made in the article of the real time invested to obtain
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Manuscript: agriculture-1001414
Title: Biodiversity of weeds in fields of grain in south-eastern Poland
Dear Editor,
We are very grateful for the insightful review of our manuscript. The reviewers' remarks and suggestions, which have been implemented into the text, will significantly increase the scientific value of it. The text has been improved according to the reviewers' remarks, and below we have enclosed comments on the revised version. All additions to the text were saved in the Track Changes mode. We hope that the manuscript in its present form meets the requirements of the Agriculture.
Yours Sincerely,
Dr inż. Barbara Krochmal-Marczak
Carpathian State College in Krosno
Department of Plant Production and Food Safety,
38-400 Krosno, Poland;
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Thank you for the remarks and suggestions of Reviewer 1. The manuscript has been corrected according to the remarks and suggestions of Reviewer 1.
Comments on the poor interpretation of biodiversity coefficients: Response: Added to the text of discussion:
,,Based on the results, Shannon-Wiener (H) and Simpson (D) indices of biodiversity were calculated. Using the described methodology, it was established that the differences between indices H and D for the analysed area and time were minor. According to Kotlarz et al. [2016], who estimated the diversity of stands of trees, the investigated area of imaging differentiated after the first and second iteration by means of PCA, and the changes were also minor. The aim of conducting other studies and more thorough analyses, e.g. PCA, and thus complete identification of species in the context of biodiversity, requires further research.”
New reference item:
Kotlarz, J.; Kubiak, K.; Kacprzak, M.; Czapski, P. Estimation of tree species diversity of forest stands based on their spectral reflectance. Sylwan, 2016, 160, 1036–1045.
Point 1: Line 3. This remark is about the wrong spelling “aestern” in the title of the paper.
Response 1: The wrong spelling “aestern” was corrected to “eastern”.
Point 2: Line 96 Remark of Reviewer 2 “is fore crop? instead forecrop?”
Response 2: Correct to “forecrop”.
Point 3: Line 122 Remark of Reviewer 2 “Active substance is not included in table 3. If it is sulfosulfuron perhaps today is not authorized but in 2013-2016 yes.”
Response 3: We followed the Reviewer’s remark. In Table 3, we added and outlined the characteristics of the active substance of the Apyros 75 WG preparation, which was available in the study years 2013–2016.
Point 4: Line 145, Remark of Reviewer 2 regarding “This paragraf belong to 2.4.1. point?’’
Response 4: This paragraph belongs to point 2.4.
Point 5: Line 158, Remark of Reviewer 2 regarding “[pcs] what does it mean?”
Response 5: [pcs.] is short for “pieces”.
Point 6: Line 171 Reviewer’s remark “Is this formula not so simple that it could be expressed with a short phrase in the text?”
Response 6: We followed the Reviewer’s remark. pattern removed. Explaining the calculations in the text.
‘The mean weight of weeds was calculated as the arithmetic mean of 4 replicates’.
Point 7: Line 209 Reviewer’s remark on the wrong phrase “sandy clay”
Response 7: We would like to thank the Reviewer for the remark. It was corrected to “sandy loam” as the research results show in Table 4.
Point 8: Line 234, Table 6 Reviewer’s remark “Is the Hydro-thermal Coefficient of Selyaninov?”
Response 8: Thank you for the remark of Reviewer 1. The item in Table 6 was corrected to: “Sielianinov Hydrothermal Coefficient”.
Point 9: Line 366 Remark of Reviewer 1 “Is 3.2?”
Response 9: We would like to thank Reviewer 1 for the remark. The wrong heading number was corrected. Changed from “1.3” to “3.3”.
Point 10: Line 510, point 3 Reviewer’s remark on the wrong reference and wrong spelling “dierent”.
Response 10: The wrong spelling “dierent” was corrected to “different”. The wrong reference was corrected from:
Haliniarz, M. The response of selected agrophytocoenoses to dierent doses of biologically active substances of herbicides. Monography; Publisher: University of Life Science in Lublin, Lublin, Poland, 2019; pp. 207, ISSN 1899-2374.https://doi.org/10.5586/aa.7335
to:
Haliniarz, M. The response of selected agrophytocenosis to different doses of biologically active substances of herbicides. In Monography; University of Life Science in Lublin, Lublin, Poland, 2019; pp. 207, ISSN 1899-2374.
Reviewer 2 Report
Recommendation: minor revisions
Comments to the authors: The topic of the paper is interesting and the paper is generally well written. However, there are few suggestions and comments need to be addressed to improve the paper.
- For what purpose the generated data are going to be used? Is it going to be used for some weed management strategies? this is important to be mentioned.
- It is mentioned it is important and good to have weed biodiversity in the field. Are you defining a threshold or degree for the number of species or the plant number of a species?
- I will strongly suggest changing the "biodiversity" in the title to "weed biodiversity".
- please look at the attached file for minor suggestions and comments.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Manuscript: agriculture-1001414
Title: Biodiversity of weeds in fields of grain in south-eastern Poland
Dear Editor,
We are very grateful for the insightful review of our manuscript. The reviewers' remarks and suggestions, which have been implemented into the text, will significantly increase the scientific value of it. The text has been improved according to the reviewers' remarks, and below we have enclosed comments on the revised version. We hope that the manuscript in its present form meets the requirements of the Agriculture.
Yours Sincerely,
Dr inż. Barbara Krochmal-Marczak
Carpathian State College in Krosno
Department of Plant Production and Food Safety,
38-400 Krosno, Poland;
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Thank you for the remarks and suggestions of Reviewer 2. The manuscript has been corrected according to the remarks and suggestions of Reviewer 2.
Replies to the remarks and suggestions of REVIEWER 2
- We followed the suggestion of Reviewer 2 and added 2 sentences to the Conclusions:
Response :“The data obtained on the diversity of weeds in the south-eastern part of Poland in the fields of cereal plants will be used in some weed control strategies. And that will be the added value of this project.”
- “Do you define the degree or rate for the number of species or the number of plants in a species?”
Response: Reviewer 2 suggests stating the damage degree for individual weed species. We believe that at this stage of work it would be impossible due to the limited time to improve the manuscript and too much data. The Institute of Plant Protection – PIB in Poznań has published such rates as averages in the Polish conditions.
- We would like to thank Reviewer 2 for the apt remark and suggestion to change to expression “biodiversity” in the title to “biodiversity of weeds”.
Response : We accept this remark. Consequently, we changed the manuscript title from “Biodiversity in fields of grain in south-eastern Poland” to “Biodiversity of weeds in fields of grain in south-eastern Poland”.
Re the remarks in the text, the following changes were made:
Point 1Line 19,21,28. The abstract was corrected.
Point 2: Line 46 What dose "it" refer to?
Response 2: The unclear sentence was removed.
Point 3: Line 46 “I am in doubt this is a right reference, nothing mentioned about biocoenosis in this reference.”
Response 3: Thank you for the remark. The marked part of the paragraph on biocenosis was removed.
Point 4: Line 110The following sentence was removed:
Response 4: “Spring and winter wheat and winter triticale seeds were acquired from the Danko Plant Breeder and the seed company Saaten-Union Polska Sp. z o.o.”
Point 5: Line 120. "Apyros 75 WG" is not included in this table.
the provider company can be presented here as well
Response 4: In Table 3, we added the active substance of the Apyros 75 WG preparation and names of active substances of other herbicides used in the plantations.
Point 5: Line 123 Reviewer’s remark is "1*" mentioning something in the table or text?
Response 5: The redundant legend was removed from under Table 1.
Point 5: Line 234 Reviewer’s remark “please remove the vertical lines in this table”.
Response 5: We would like to ask the Reviewer to agree to vertical lines in the table, as they are necessary for the sake of aesthetics and readability.
Point 6: Reviewer’s remark,,Is this means you are presenting the average data of a 30 year data? please clarify’’.
Response 6: We followed the remark of Reviewer 2 and corrected “Decade” to “Decade of the month”.
Response 7: The redundant explanations were removed from under Table 3 and the remaining ones, and reference to Table 1 was added.
Response 8: Line 283 & 340 – The redundant markings were removed from under the tables, and references to markings under Table 2 or the list of abbreviations were added.
Point : Reviewer’s remark,,Dose this mean a degree of weed biodiversity in the fields?’’
Response: Line 451 The marked paragraph was removed from the manuscript.
