Reusing Coir-Based Substrates for Lettuce Growth: Nutrient Content and Phytonutrients Accumulation
, Isabel Alves-Pereira 2,*, Inês Alves 3, Rui M. A. Ferreira 2 and Nazim S. Gruda 4Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors, this paper is clear and with a high novelty value in respect to the topic of growing media end life management.
I suggest to improve materials and methods and clarify some points regarding growing media characteristics at the beginning of the lettuce experiment. You referred to the one on spinach, but some data/values are not completely clear to me (e.g., ending ECw of spinach trial vs. starting ECw of lettuce trial). Please see more detailed remarks in the attached document.
Moreover some results must be improved in respect to related discussion (e.g., K and N tissue values or proline content).
Finally, conclusions seems more a summary of results. I think you can improve with some more considerations on obtained results as some "advices" for growers.
Kind regards
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
Title: Reusing Coir-Based Substrates for Lettuce Growth: Nutrient Content and Phytonutrients Accumulation
General Comments:
This research aimed to assess the influence of reusing coir-based substrates on growth, nutrient content, and phytonutrients accumulation in lettuce. It fully proves that coir-based growing media can be reused for another short-cycle crop, like lettuce, without yield loss or phytonutrients decrease. However, some sentences lack conjunctions, and it is recommended to submit them after modification.
Specific Comments:
1. Introduction line 33-36,36-37,41-43,44-45,50-51,69-71: Please supplement the corresponding references.
2. Introduction line 60: Please explain what substrate decay means.
3. Introduction line 78-80: This sentence should be changed to” Strategies to reduce potential issues related to substrate decay, improve sustainability, and reduce production costs are key to reusing substrates for planting other short-term crops.”
4. Section 2.1, 2.2 line 147-148: Please add the corresponding measurement method and the instruments and equipment used.
5. Section 2.1 line 107: Please specify the specific varieties of spinach.
6. Section 3.1 line 232-237: Please adjust the size of the icons in the image and avoid mixing the number of lines on the right with the image.
7. Tables 1, 2 and4: The first and last lines of the three line table should be bold, and each line should be uniform. The data should be centered.
8. Table 3: This table is not mentioned in the text.
9.Section 3.5 line 404-412: Please avoid mixing the number of lines on the right with the image.
10. Please add the outlook section.
11. All the figure quality should be strongly improved, e.g., Fig. 4 & 5...
English language was well.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
