Effects of Commercial Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Inoculants on Plant Productivity and Intra-Radical Colonization in Native Grassland: Unintentional De-Coupling of a Symbiosis?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors. Thank you for such an interesting work. There only several minor comments to the text:

1)     Table 3 ‘Values within columns that do not share letters are statistically different from one another, with significance assessed at p < 0.05.’- should be placed under the Table as a note

2)     Line 143 ‘plat’ change to ‘plant’

3)     Fig.1,2  legend: add  the words: ‘the description of inoculums A,B,C,D,E,F is given in Table 2’

Author Response

Dear authors. Thank you for such an interesting work. There only several minor comments to the text:

Thankyou for the kind remarks!

1) Table 3 ‘Values within columns that do not share letters are statistically different from one another, with significance assessed at p < 0.05.’- should be placed under the Table as a note.

Thank you, the suggested correction has been made.

2) Line 143 ‘plat’ change to ‘plant’

Thank you for pointing this out; the misspelling has been corrected.

3) Fig.1,2 legend: add  the words: ‘the description of inoculums A,B,C,D,E,F is given in Table 2’

The recommended text has been added to figure legends 1 and 2.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for submitting your manuscript about AMF commercial inocula and its effects on plants. I think that you should resubmit the manuscript adding some important information:

- what type of inocula did you screen? Can you add information about composition? in terms of physical features and number of propagules.

- add more information about your results in terms of raw data and graphs

Author Response

Thank you for submitting your manuscript about AMF commercial inocula and its effects on plants. I think that you should resubmit the manuscript adding some important information:

- what type of inocula did you screen? Can you add information about composition? in terms of physical features and number of propagules.

We have added specifications about the inoculums used in our study to the best of our ability, based off descriptions provided on the product websites.

- add more information about your results in terms of raw data and graphs

We have included means of raw data in supplemental tables 1 and 2, and have referenced these new tables in the results section.