Research and Possible Agronomic Applications of C₆₀(OH)₂₄ Adducts with Heavy Metals for Crop Treatment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is well-written and can be useful in agriculture sector. I recommend accepting this article after these minor revisions:

1. The abstract part should describe the important findings with numbers. It would be helpful to readers. 

2. The introduction part should be re-written.

3. Please rewrite all the figure captions.

4. In Figure 3, error bar should be included. 

5. FT-IR data needs to be added either in the main article or in the SI.

6. Size distribution data needs to be replotted using standard software and the raw data file can be included in the SI. 

7. What are the PDI values for different adducts? 

8. Please fix all the topological errors throughout the article, e.g., Table 6-Humus content range.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Corrections in the manuscript are in blue.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper by Kulenova et al. describes a technical report on metal adducts of fullerenols as crop-harvesting reagents. It is rather difficult to evaluate the results for the increase in the yield of crops, for the documents of methods for quantitative analysis are not easily accessible. Comments are focused only on the scientific issues on chemical analyses of the materials used.

 

The light-scattering analysis shows the major size spanning in 100 – 1000 nm, indicating particulate matter dispersed in water. I wonder if the word “soluble” is appropriate or not. The decreasing “solubility” with increasing temperature contradicts the typical behavior of molecular solutes whose solubility increases with increasing temperature. Morphological changes of molecular aggregates upon increasing temperature may be responsible for the decrease in solubility.

 

Mass spectra of the metal adducts of fullerenols are helpful for chemical bonding between the metal atoms/ions and fullerenol molecules/ions.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

It is suggested to replace the phrase “natural temperature” by “ambient temperature”.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Corrections in the manuscript are in red.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf