Region and Crop Type Influenced Fungal Diversity and Community Structure in Agricultural Areas in Qinghai Province
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
I congratulate the efforts the authors made towards study. However few points need to addressed.
1. Lot of spelling mistakes is found in manuscript such as Barly instead of Barley, changs instead of changes. I think spell check needs to done for whole manuscript
2.Line no 11-13 needs reframing of sentence
3. Line 24 soil physicochemical properties is repeated in abstract please check.
4. In line number 39 weather authors means Geographic distance or geography ? Please clarify
5. In all place oilseed rape is used, I think rapeseed can be used as it more acceptable word in literature?
6.Line no 45 is it drived or derived?
7. Line no 47-48 need to reframed.
8. Chao 1 "C" should be in capital letters
9. Line no 82 narrowly is misspelled
10. Figure 1 need to be adjusted as E and F coming in different page
11. In manuscript it is written that genotypes do effect the soil fungal diversity, however the genotypes are not mentioned of wheat, rapeseed and barley in manuscript.
12. Line no 553-556 "In this study, the abundance of the selected fungal species had positive or negative relationships with water content, total sulfur, ammonium nitrogen, and nitrate nitrogen, but no relationship with soil pH, organic matter, and effective sulfur, suggesting that the abundance of fungi in the tested soils was predominantly determined by soil nitrogen content" it for the current study or any reference. Please reframe
13. Better to write abstract again as it not the true representative of your study.
Thank you
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageEnglish editing is required especially spell checks and sentence framing for easy understanding to readers
Author Response
We really appreciate their constructive comments and suggestions, which have significantly improved the paper. We have considered your comments very carefully and revised the manuscript accordingly.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors and editors,
The manuscript “Region and crop type influenced fungal diversity and community structure from agricultural areas in Qinghai Province" presents well-discussed and valuable data on soil fungal diversity. The obtained results are important and have relevance in agriculture for determining the quality and health status of the soil under changes in environmental and agricultural conditions.
With the aim to improve the final version of the manuscript, I have some suggestions for minor corrections:
· On line 42 the word changs should be corrected to changes.
· On line 378 the Latin names of the genera Phoma, Conocybe, and Spizellomyces should be written in italics.
· On line 395 the Latin name Nectriag should be corrected to Nectria.
· On line 396 the name of the order Erysiphaceae should be corrected to Erysiphales.
· On line 400 the Latin name of the family Olpidiomycetes should be corrected to Olpidiaceae.
· On line 454, something seems to be missing from the sentence: Many studies report that a……. Please check it for a better expression.
Finally, in 4 places in the manuscript (in Table 1 and Table 2, on lines 414, 416, 418, 421, 424, 427, and on lines 535-536) it is written Lasiosphaeriaceae sp., Chytridiomycota sp., Dothideomycetes sp., and Leotiomycetes sp. From a taxonomic point of view, such combinations between family name level (Lasiosphaeriaceae), phylum name level (Chytridiomycota), class level name (Dothideomycetes and Leotiomycetes) and abbreviation for an unknown species name (sp.) are unacceptable. One should write, for example, an unknown species of Chytridiomycota, etc. instead of Chytridiomycota sp.
Author Response
We really appreciate your constructive comments and suggestions, which have significantly improved the manuscript. We have considered your comments very carefully and revised the manuscript accordingly.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis is interesting research. Few comments are added here to improve the manuscript.
In the abstract and methodology mentioned about four agricultural areas and three crops that research carried out. However the connection between crops and regions haven’t clearly mentioned. To make the text clear to readers better to mention about the vegetation type/ crop type of each agricultural area.
Spellings mistake: line no. 42- changsà change
Abstract needs to be updated: soil physical properties (temperature, organic matter) were measured during the analyses and mentioned in the methodology but not in the abstract.
Line no 545- three fungal classes (Helotiales, Hypocreales, and Mitosporic basidiomycete): These are not classes, but orders and last one is an artificial group
Author Response
We really appreciate your constructive comments and suggestions, which have significantly improved the manuscript. We have considered your comments very carefully and revised the manuscript accordingly.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript entitled "Region and crop type influenced fungal diversity and community structure from agricultural areas in Qinghai Province" describes the composition of fungal communities studied by amplicon sequencing of ITS fragment. Authors sampled 40 soil samples representing four different regions in China and three crops. The study is an initial description of these soils including: fungal biodiversity and composition together with chemical characteristics of soil.
First of all the article need moderate English editing as in several places there are stylistic and syntactic errors in several places. Below are some comments to each section:
Methods description:
l. 80-81 any proof of this "our investigation"?
2. How large was the sampled area in case of each analysed soil sample (range)? Five individual cores were sampled from a field/plot of which area? 100 square meters or 5 hectares.
3. Why only S and N parameters where checked? How about P and K?
Results:
1. Too many figures (in total 36 plots arranged in 12 figures!). In fact Figure 1A and 1B are not easily readible, maybe it would be better to move them to supplement? The boxplots presents medians or means? It is not clearly written. I would suggest to use legends which are more reader friendly. Why not write instead of the long letter code that these are rape, wheat or barley trials?
2. I think that the Authors do not need to show the diversity of the communities on each possible level. It could be reduced (Phylum, class, genus). Are you sure that the power of ITS analysis is enough to assign anything to species level?
3. There is no word about the ANOVA used for analysis showed in Table 1 in materials section. where the assumptions checked? ANOVA needs groups of the same size, which is not correct in the case of your dataset.
4. I could not see "regions were clearly distinct" (line 194) on Figure 3B... Figure 3 instead of Figurer 3 in the text.
5. l. 241 "19 fungal phyla" and then in Figure 6 there is 20 top phyla. I know that the one is unclassified but it is a misleading statement.
I can't help feeling that the authors have focused on the number of drawings in the article and have done little work on the content. As a result, the article does not look very encouraging, despite its potential. Not all the statistical analyses look well chosen. A lot more work needs to be done, including on the language style, before the article can be published.
The article need moderate English editing as in several places there are stylistic and syntactic errors in several places. The whole text should be read carefully. Too many comments to list them all.
Author Response
We really appreciate your constructive comments and suggestions, which have significantly improved the manuscript. We have considered your comments very carefully and revised the manuscript accordingly.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript could be published in Agriculture MDPI.
