Dissolved Organic Matter from Earthworm Casts Restrained the Phytotoxicity of Soil Glyphosate to Citrus (Poncirus trifoliata (L.) Raf.) Plants
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
Your study is dealing with an important scientific question about the inter-relation between soil structure, OM content, microbial activities and enzymatic dynamics. You should focus more on this aspect than on the "miracle" tale of ECWs-DOM application. Then your introduction should be rewritten through this consideration. Moreover your introduction should introduce your experiment(s). For example, no word on enzymatic issue although it's the major part of your discussion.
It would be more constructive to separate results et discussion. It will help to present your results per studied variables, then to discuss the processes involved by mixing your different results.
Another important point is you don't describe enough your modalities of the experiment. You will see my numerous comments inside your text. Take care, the system you describe is highly dynamics and never you discuss about the duration of the experiment, the time schedule of your samplings. On the other hand, it's well known that the type of soil interact directly with the enzymatic dynamics, no word about that ? What about the dilution effect of your water addition ? Could you precise that the soil sample you used is without any solid OM ? What is the soil composition ? granulometry ? porosity ? 70% of humidity represent which volume of water in 1 kg of your experiment ? Could you confirm that the experiment is in-door ? So without sun ?
And what about the Gly degradation ? It's known that Gly is degraded very quickly, mainly through water lixiviation (NB: it could be your water addition, but I understood your 1 kg pocket are closed, so without any water runoff). The half-life of Gly is estimated from 6 to 60 days: what is the half-life of your molecule used ? the duration of the experiment ? ...
At last, about the scientific significance of your text: it would be efficient if you crosscut the statistical analysis of all the studied variables with 2-ways ANOVA, PCA, sunray plot to visualize the distribution of your variables in relationship with the treatment. You could also try to build a functional chain of the enzymatic dynamic, etc.
And try to short your sentences, often too long. In your conclusion, one sentence is on 8 lines ! Impossible to understand !
Kind regards
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Too long sentences.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript entitled ‘Dissolved organic matter from earthworm casts helped citrus (Poncirus trifoliata (L.) Raf.) plants thrive under soil glyphosate stress’ need following improvements.
Revise the title please.
Manuscript needs thorough English revisions for grammatical errors and its better understanding. There are following points that are of major concern:
Glyphosate is commonly used herbicide, and main concern is its contamination in plant parts and soil. From title it’s also obvious Gly stress also effect plant growth but in results, control and gly treated plants have no obvious differences in terms of seedlings growth if we see plant pictures. Title and results do not support each other.
In lieu of only plant growth and enzymes assays, this study should be complemented with remediation effect of EWCs-DOM. It would be important to know whether EWCs-DOM help plant in growth promotion or also help to block gly accumulation in plants.
Other points to consider are following:
Introduction must be supplemented with previous reports of Gly soil stress effect on plant growth and EWC and its DOM impact and mechanism for Gly or relevant herbicide contamination control.
L35-38: L56-62 rephrase
L-128-129: rephrase
Seedling harvest stage is not mentioned.
Results, rephrase 3.3 heading
At many points its difficult to comprehend the context. as
L35-38: L56-62, L-128-129 in Abstract and conclusion too.
recheck for figures captions too.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
Thanks a lot for your detailed responses. You improved a lot the manuscript. However I am still feeling you will gain a lot if you share the presentation of your results from your discussion. I engaged you also to use better and frankly your previous results on cowpea.
I let you to read my comments below.
Kind regards
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer，
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the editorial board, the handling editor, the reviewers, and you for the critical review of this manuscript. We would like to submit the revised manuscript and hope the enclosed manuscript meet your expectation.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
Manuscript still need thorough revision for grammar and scientific understanding.
New title describes the study better but needs restructuring.
For many concerns reply was that it’s not scope of study.
Kindly specify objectives, then title, introduction and all relevant sections should complement and support your core objectives of the study.
Methodology should be adequately described, as added seedling stage. Similarly, for other experiments add necessary details of time and temperature etc.
Discussion how gly half life impact if any on plant growth, how it modify your results?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer，
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the editorial board, the handling editor, the reviewers, and you for the critical review of this manuscript. We would like to submit the revised manuscript and hope the enclosed manuscript meet your expectation.
Sincerely,
Lei Jiang
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
