Root, Yield, and Quality of Alfalfa Affected by Soil Salinity in Northwest China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript is well done but add little to the general knowledge about the relatio between alfalfa and salinity.
The text of the manuscript is too long, full of minor details. To me the text have to be reduced by 40-50%. For instance, the section "relationship between plant height quality paramenter is " does not add anything important.
Figure 1 is uncessary because this fact is known for decades.
Lines 428/432 contain a conclusion. Move to this section.
Author Response
1. The manuscript is well done but add little to the general knowledge about the relation between alfalfa and salinity. The text of the manuscript is too long, full of minor details. To me the text have to be reduced by 40-50%. For instance, the section "relationship between plant height quality paramenter is " does not add anything important.
Response: We reorganized some sections to shorten the manuscript in the revision. In terms of the section “Relationship between plant height and quality parameters”, we decided to keep it considering that the relationship between alfalfa morphological parameters such as plant height has been widely used to estimate alfalfa quality. We believe that the relationship obtained on salt-affected soils is of great interest for some readers. Therefore, we decided to keep it.
2. Figure 1 is uncessary because this fact is known for decades.
Response: Fig.1 has been deleted as suggested.
3. Lines 428/432 contain a conclusion. Move to this section
Response: The sentence was the statement on the conclusion of previous studies, and our results happened to agree with it. Therefore, it was not the conclusion only drawn from this study. We put it here to demonstrate that our results regarding the effect of salinity on alfalfa growth were consistent with those of previous studies, which was part of discussion. Therefore, we decided to leave it in the Discussion section.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Authors investigated the effects of different soil salinity levels (in presence and absence of biosolids fertilizer) on alfalfa root development, growth and quality based on a two years experiment. The results of this study are of significant importance to the researchers and other stakeholders. Overall, manuscript is well written and organized properly. Introduction is supported by enough literature review. However, improvements could be done in by shortening the results and adding more supportive literature in discussion section. Conclusions must not just be the similar statements as those of results.
1) Line 158, Why control for salinity was not used for the comparison?
2) On page 6, equation of RFV needs to be corrected. What does * represent at the end?
3) Quality of figures 3 and 4 is too low. Enhance their pixels for the clarity.
4) Line 539, How this study is unique from previously published studies? Is it already reported in many studies that alfalfa plant parameters are negatively affected under saline soil.
5) Line 544, How the salinity tolerance of alfalfa tended to be greater with the age?
Authors are advised to address all the above issues, before it can be finalized for publication.
Author Response
Authors investigated the effects of different soil salinity levels (in presence and absence of biosolids fertilizer) on alfalfa root development, growth and quality based on a two years experiment. The results of this study are of significant importance to the researchers and other stakeholders. Overall, manuscript is well written and organized properly. Introduction is supported by enough literature review. However, improvements could be done in by shortening the results and adding more supportive literature in discussion section. Conclusions must not just be the similar statements as those of results.
1. Line 158, Why control for salinity was not used for the comparison?
Response: We did not include the control treatment mainly because of the limited number of plots. There were 18 plots in total, which allowed only three levels of treatments when biosolid fertilizer treatment was included. Considering that alfalfa is moderately salinity tolerant, we decided to set up the three salinity levels of 2‰, 4‰, and 6‰. We think the setup was appropriate to meet our main objective to examine the effects of salinity on alfalfa growth and quality.
2. On page 6, equation of RFV needs to be corrected. What does * represent at the end?
Response: * indicates multiplication. We changed it to ×.
3. Quality of figures 3 and 4 is too low. Enhance their pixels for the clarity.
Response: The figures has been redrawn.
4. Line 539, How this study is unique from previously published studies? Is it already reported in many studies that alfalfa plant parameters are negatively affected under saline soil.
Response: As we stated in the Introduction, few studies have examined the effect of salinity on alfalfa growth, especially root parameters, in field conditions, and for consecutive years. Although the main conclusion was consistent with previous studies, our study also demonstrated that the salinity effect on yield varied in the two years, and the root and above-ground biomass responded differently to soil salinity, and the responses also varied between the years.
5. Line 544, How the salinity tolerance of alfalfa tended to be greater with the age?
Response: The conclusion was drawn based on the results that there was no significant difference in most root parameters in 2019, in contrast to the result that high salinity treatment significantly hindered the root development in 2018. The decreasing slope of yield with EC for later cuts might be another evidence for that. However, later cuts do not necessarily indicate the ‘aging’. For clarification, we changed ‘the increase in age’ in the conclusion to “later cuts”.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Although paid very less attention, authors have made some changes in the revised version. I feel the current version of the manuscript is OK for publication.
