Yield and Economic Results of Different Mechanical Pruning Strategies on “Navel Foyos” Oranges in the Mediterranean Area

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Line 42 - "....the increase of its efficiency". - should be better explained;

Table 1 - the color and/or width of the lines representing mechanical cuts should be increase in order to obtain a better perception;

Table 1 - Suggestion for the title: Interventions sequence by pruning strategy;

Pruning strategy: for a better perception something should separate the number from the letter(s);

Equation 1: For a better presentation the equation editor of OFFIce should be used. The symbol "/" is not the  sign of division in a equation;

In the text the heading 2.4.3 are repeted;

Line 189 and 190 -  the comment of the result is not correct; it  could be used on the average result;

Line 219 - The value of the working capacity should be between parentheses;

Line 227 and 235- Mention of table 9 should be placed at the begining of the paragraph;

Line 269- How should the mechanical pruning pratices be modified? An explanation of this sentence are required.

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall assessment

The study provides some interesting information about the opportunity to prune mechanically citrus orchards in Spain.

There are two major flaws in my opinion.

The first one concerns the English, as the wording is generally poor and sometimes it is difficult to fully comprehend Authors’ thought.

The second flaw concerns the method of quantifying the pruning biomass produced from the stands under study.

First of all, the "working capacity", which is one of the main aims of the manuscript and is strictly tied to the final cost of the citrus’ orchards pruning, is lacking of detail. Nothing it has been said about time recording procedure (instruments used, machine’ speed observed, delay times, etc.). In this regard I suggest to have a look at a study regarding mechanical pruning in olive stands written by Spinelli et al. in 2011 (Integrating olive grove maintenance and energy biomass recovery with a single-pass pruning and harvesting machine. Biomass and Bioenergy, 35:808-813).

Secondly, Authors provide just the fresh biomass weight. As a rule, only the dry matter can give a reasonable idea of quantities and costs, especially if compared to other context and weather conditions.

Taking into consideration the second flaw as a whole, a disclaimer from Authors’ side is strongly recommended about the fact that the present study represents a first step for further research.  

In detail

Lines 27-28. If the surface covered by Citrus is over 50%, the other two percentages must be different from 36% and 14%, otherwise it doesn’t sum up to 100%.

Line 44. I suggest to replace “strategy” here and in the whole manuscript, with “pattern”, “scheme” or “framework”.

Lines 45-46. Please check the syntax, this sentence is not clear.

Line 58. I suggest to replace “planting frame of 6 m between rows by 3.6 m between trees in a row” with “the spacing was of 6 m between the rows and 3.6 m along the rows”.

Line 58. I really don’t understand the meaning of the sentence: “Rows were conformed in raised beds”. Can you please explain it in other words?

Line 61. “starting in”.

Line 68. Please explain what BBCH means.

Line 75. I would delete the second “manual pruning”, referred to shears, it’s redundant.

Line 79. “Motor-manual” trimmer, because it works with an engine.

Lines 76-84. All this paragraph should be reorganized, because the description of pruning operations is described here and there, a bit mixed up. Generally speaking, any description of pruning operations (topping, hedging, etc.) should be followed by the description of the machine used.     

Line 86. I would rename the paragraph with “Survey” or “Measurements”.

Line 89. Please replace “evaluation trees” with “trees under study” or “trees under investigation”.

Line 94. “canopy size” is redundant, please rephrase.

Lines 96-103. “On one hand/on another hand” in this context are not correct. You are describing a sequence in a process, not two phenomena, opposed to one another. The whole bunch of sentences must be carefully checked about wording. Moreover: Line 99. Replace “estimated” with “measured”; from now on, all the ratios must be expressed as (in this case) kg tree^-1.

Line 111. Trees hour^-1

Line 113. “in case”

Line 117. Please use always numbers, as here, or always letters, as in Line 97 (“one hundred”), not a mix of the two.

Line 126. TWC has been already explained before (L111), no need to explain it again.

Line 130.  Please correct the numeration: 2.4.4.

Line 157. “Descriptive analysis for each pruning pattern per year”.

Line 161. “through”

L 168. “in Table 4”

L 169. “the manual pattern”; “in two years: 36.41% in 2017 …”.

L 171. I would change the sentence in the following way: “Trees’ height was reduced in the 46-53 cm range for both 2017 and 2018 years, regardless the pruning scheme and the different starting height, 2.31 m and 2.98 m, respectively”.

L198. Here the 2018’s figure is wrong. The right value is 108.3 kg tree^-1

L210. This sentence can be rephrased in the following way: “…followed by 2016 with 75.7 mm and 2017 with 79.1 mm (Table 8), the latter year characterized by the lowest yield”.

L222. Please correct “Heding” in “Hedging”.  

Table 5. In the column “Type of cutting”, please correct “Heding” in “Hedging”

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Investigations on the sustainability of mechanical pruning as well as intensive cultivations of orchards, vineyards and olivegrows are an interesting topic in order to achieve a reduction of production costs while assuring the quality of the products.

The authors found with scientific method the suitability of the mechanical harvesting in the case of ‘Navel Foyos’ Oranges.
The results will be useful also for further studies on the behavior of different species/varieties to this practice.

 

Author Response

The authors thank the comments of the reviewer.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I have read through the Authors' response and I still have some comments for the amendments, in particular (quoting the Authors' Word file):

In the paper the following sentence has been added in the new lines 120 and 121, at the beggining of the first paragraph of section 2.4.3.:
"The uptime spent in each operation was measured with a chronometer."
Also it has been clarified that the measured time is the 'uptime'.

"uptime" it is not a correct term in time motion studies, a better definition for it is "productive time" and a disclaimer would be recommended from Authors side, because in real work a certain rate of delay times (20-25%) must be added to sum up to the "total time", productive time+delay time. The matter is not trivial, cause one of the study's aims is the calculation of pruning costs, which are definitely affected by total time.

The other remarks have been overall amended.

Author Response

Following the suggestion of the reviewer we changed “uptime” to “productive time” (lines 140, 143, 145, 146, 149, 151, 152 and 154 document showing all reviewing changes).

We decided not to consider delay times because it depends on the orchards and the range of value obtained can be very broad and the importance is to compare the strategies in the same conditions. We agree with the reviewer that we should clarify this, therefore we add the following sentence:

“The cost of the pruning operation (€ ha^–1), without considering delay times, for each strategy was determined based on the TWC using Equation (1):”

 

The authors would like to thank once again for the in-depth review carried out by the reviewer.