Long-Term Organic Cultivation in Greenhouses Enhances Vegetable Yield and Soil Carbon Accumulation through the Promotion of Soil Aggregation
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe concept of the manuscript are interesting and corresponds to the scope of the journal. Results originated from a long-term experiment which increase the value of the manuscript. However, more than half of the presented results were also communicated in your earlier article (Tong et al., 2020) which decreases the novelty of this manuscript. You put the results of bulk soil in the Supplement however these results are used in the evaluation and discussion. I suggest to move these results from the Supplement to the text of the manuscript. Materials and methods needs a lot of improvements and, I added some comments to the discussion and conclusions parts, too.
Line 49: You wrote that greenhouse systems are sustainable, but in the lines 51-52 it is written that these systems are a burden on the environment and ecology. It seems to be a contradiction.
Line 110: “of” is missing between “stability soil”.
Line 158: What kind of organic fertilizer was used in the CC treatment? Is the applied organic fertilizer the same in each year?
Line 190: If you collected undisturbed soil samples, while did you create a composite sample from them?
Line 197: Please, create a new paragraph for the fractionation process for better understanding. If you fractionated 200 g of soil for separating different sizes of aggregates, you had about 40-80 g of fractions based on Fig. 2. According to the given sample weights of the methods used, 40 g is not enough to do all the measurements. How could you manage this problem?
Line 203: How did you determined the mean diameter of size fractions? What does Mi mean in the Equation 1?
Line 212: Please, give the reference for the SOC determination. Please, give the exact weight of the “pre-weighed soil sample”.
Line 227: Blair et al., 1995 is missing from the reference list.
Line 229: 1/3 mol L-1 does not seem an exact concentration.
Line 236: Please, add the references for all the measured enzyme activities. Please, give the measured substrate or enzyme product in the unit of the enzyme activities in each cases.
Line 237: Please, detail the enzyme measuring methods in the same order as you listed them. How many inner replications were used for enzymes measurements?
Line 246: Please, delete the sentence of urease from the method of catalase.
Line 252: Please, define the time of measurement in the unit of catalase.
Line 264: Activity of invertase or cellulose?
Fig. 2: Please, check and correct the small letters in case of IC and OC in the first figure. On the second figure two CC were written, please, correct it.
Line 322: Results of Tukey’s test on Fig. 3 do not prove this statement: “with an increase observed as the aggregate size decreased”.
Figure 3: Please add to the figure capture all the presented parameters.
Line 341: CP remained here from your earlier article.
Figure 4: Some small letters of Tukey’s test results are missing from the figure. Please, improve the units. Did you measure sucrose or invertase? Please, use the same order in the capture than the figures arranged.
Line 352: Please, check the new nomenclature of bacteria phyla, i.g. Pseudomonadota, the former Proteobacteria.
Line 393: If the yield was fluctuated year by year, and data represented 18 years, how could you apply them for SEM analysis and related them for soil parameters measured in one year?
Lines 439-445: This is a result, not a discussion. Please, delete the sentences.
Line 475: Factor of what?
Line 514: I suggest to add reference for your statements, after “soil fertility”.
Line 516: I suggest to add reference for your statements, after “stabilized organic carbon”.
Line 528: Ref. 27 does not refer for your statement. Please, check it.
Line 536-563: There are some similar statements in these two paragraphs. Please, rephrase them.
Conclusions: Please, do not use results in the conclusions.
Generally about Fig.3-4: Please, add the measured substrate of enzyme product to the units on the x axis of the figure. Please, use the same order of treatments in axis y as done in fig. 1 (or vica versa).
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript has some observations that should be corrected as indicated in the text. In general, the manuscript requires minimal correction to be accepted.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
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Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
The research is very interesting. Although the quality of article is high I have some comments.
1. In my opinin there is no need to provide climatic conditions since the research was conducted in a greenhouse.
2. An improved description of the methodology is needed. Why were undisturbed samples taken if they were later mixed?
3. Not properly named fraction "The extractable organic carbon (EOC)" - line 226 - should be "easily oxidized organic carbon".
4. There is no information in the methodology about what fruits were grown, or are they the same in all greenhouses? There is a table in the supplementary materials, but it is not enough. This is analyzed in the results.
5. Figure 3. There is lack of information about DOC and MBC.
6. It is worth to indicate, that results apply to loam soils. Different results would be expected in e.g. sandy soils.
Yours sincerely,
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors, I can accept your answers and modifications and wish you a successful work.
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