Sustainability Perspectives of Organic Farming and Plant Factory Systems—From Divergences towards Synergies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments Horticulturae-2521505

The objective of the manuscript ‘Organic versus Controlled Environment Agriculture from a sustainability perspective’ was not stated. Besides, a hypothesis must be added.

Lines 130-131: Crops’ scientific names (genus, specie, and authority) should be added.

What does Agriculture 4.0 mean or imply? The authors must clearly state this because this is a review in which Agriculture 4.0 is discussed. A statement such as ‘Defining Agriculture 4.0 is still a challenge’ is unacceptable.

What does Sustainable Agriculture mean or imply?

A useful Figure or Table could include the similarities and divergences between Organic agriculture, controlled environmental agriculture, Agriculture 4.0, plant factory, and Sustainable agriculture. Otherwise, unprecise and general ideas will be discussed without sufficient fundamental knowledge. A review must have a real scientific contribution and a well-organized discussion. A review is not a bunch of general ideas.

The manuscript should have a defined objective (missing) and, therefore, it should focus on the title, objective, and information to reject or accept the hypothesis (also missing). I do not understand how Figure 3 contributes to the discussion of the review? Delete it.

Do you have permission for pictures in Figure 7?

Are you using ‘Plant Factory’ as a synonym of ‘Controlled Environment Agriculture’?

First, indicate the full name of the acronym. After that, indicate de acronym between parentheses, but not vice versa.

The manuscript is interesting. However, some precisions and queries are required before acceptance.

This manuscript uses several acronyms throughout the manuscript, Tables, and Figures. Therefore, these must be indicated in Figures and Tables. Remember that Tables and Figures should be self-explicatory.

Typographic mistakes in the manuscript and uncorrected use of punctuation marks.

Highlights. These are not shown.

The citations must be reviewed. There are some inconsistencies. Besides, the References section must be double-checked; it has several inconsistencies.

Tables’ and Figures’ captions and headings must be self-explanatory. Do not forget to indicate the meaning of each acronym, and do not duplicate legends. Besides, names and units in the Figures' axes must always be added. Remember to add the name of the axis and indicate the units inside the parentheses.

Please read again and carefully throughout the manuscript. It has typography mistakes, inadequate use of capital letters, and some missing blanks. Use subscripts or superscripts appropriately, where appropriate, throughout the document.

Please do not use more than three citations for each statement. When you use more than three citations in a statement, please only retain the newest three.

The authors explain the reason for writing this manuscript, but the reasoning is severely flawed.

The review is full of hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims.

The authors present a very biased and uninformed view.

The statements are excessively broad, and there are too many exceptions.

The writing needs to be reviewed by a native English speaker. There are many grammatical errors, especially concerning plurals in subject-verb agreement.

I detected a strong bias since the first paragraph of the manuscript.

The manuscript has 250 references, but many are old and unnecessary. Please delete old and irrelevant references or replace them with newer ones.

This manuscript must be retyped and reviewed by coauthors or colleagues and by an expert, native English-speaking scientist before resubmission.

 

The manuscript could be interesting, but this manuscript is a bunch of scientific information without logical order, not relevance. Therefore, there is no scientific contribution. Therefore, the authors are strongly advised to consider a substantial revision of the work. However, some mistakes indicated before require improvement before acceptance. Therefore, major revision is required.

There is no continuity in ideas. Section and subsection need to be reorganized.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

First, we would like to thank your work of reading through the manuscript and giving us suggestions to improve the quality of the publication.

Our research team has carefully read through your recommendations and upon our best knowledge we’ve made the corrections. We have also checked the English spelling and grammar and made corrections with track changes. Our answers are listed below.

 

The objective of the manuscript ‘Organic versus Controlled Environment Agriculture from a sustainability perspective’ was not stated. Besides, a hypothesis must be added.

            Aims and hypotheses have been added at lines 124-143. 

Lines 130-131: Crops’ scientific names (genus, specie, and authority) should be added.

Thank you for your suggestion, scientific names were added here, and in other places throughout the article, where a given plant species was first mentioned. 

What does Agriculture 4.0 mean or imply? The authors must clearly state this because this is a review in which Agriculture 4.0 is discussed. A statement such as ‘Defining Agriculture 4.0 is still a challenge’ is unacceptable.

The review discusses Agriculture 4.0 in the view of its applicability in both organic and CEA systems. We provided a definition and described Agriculture 4.0 in line 71-86. The cited sentence has been revised and further rewordings were applied.

What does Sustainable Agriculture mean or imply?

We used this term after Klerx and Rose (2020), (     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2019.100347), who mention it as a concept for all the agricultural activities, which aim to be sustainable, including agriculture 4.0. and organic farming as well.

A useful Figure or Table could include the similarities and divergences between Organic agriculture, controlled environmental agriculture, Agriculture 4.0, plant factory, and Sustainable agriculture. Otherwise, unprecise and general ideas will be discussed without sufficient fundamental knowledge. A review must have a real scientific contribution and a well-organized discussion. A review is not a bunch of general ideas.

Thank you for pointing this out. We prepared a general figure for the comparison of PF and OF systems.

The manuscript should have a defined objective (missing) and, therefore, it should focus on the title, objective, and information to reject or accept the hypothesis (also missing). 

Aims and objectives has been added at the end of the introduction and comprehensively evaluated at the end of each subchapters. 

I do not understand how Figure 3 contributes to the discussion of the review? Delete it.

Thank you for your suggestion. According to the remarks of Reviewer 3, we have further analyzed Figure 3, which might justify its existence in the present article. 

Do you have permission for pictures in Figure 7?

We consider the use of logos for scientific illustration purposes as those not requiring permissions. The use of logos on products requires permission, as it indicates the origin from organic production, as well as undergone under certification. We also checked the general descriptions of proper use of logos and did not find any restrictions for such use. When not applied on products, the logo does not cause misleadings or misunderstandings, therefore, to our understanding, does not require permission. 

Are you using ‘Plant Factory’ as a synonym of ‘Controlled Environment Agriculture’?

According to our understanding, CEA is a broader term, which contains all sorts of protected plant production facilities regardless of the level of independence from natural environmental factors. Inconsistencies arising from this have been solved by removing vertical farming and controlled environment and replacing them uniformly with plant factory. This nomenclature is used now in the text, except where the broader term (CEA) is intentionally used. 

First, indicate the full name of the acronym. After that, indicate de acronym between parentheses, but not vice versa.

            Acronym definitions have been revised and corrected according to your suggestion. 

The manuscript is interesting. However, some precisions and queries are required before acceptance. This manuscript uses several acronyms throughout the manuscript, Tables, and Figures. Therefore, these must be indicated in Figures and Tables. Remember that Tables and Figures should be self-explicatory.

Acronyms have been checked and modified where definitions were missing. Table and figure captions have completely been revised and reworded in order to make them self-explanatory. 

Typographic mistakes in the manuscript and uncorrected use of punctuation marks.

            Typographic mistakes have been checked and corrected. 

Highlights. These are not shown.

Thank you for the remark. We have checked the instructions for authors and did not find the requirement for highlights.

The citations must be reviewed. There are some inconsistencies. Besides, the References section must be double-checked; it has several inconsistencies.

Reference manager was used for formatting the references, the results were double-checked and corrected. 

Tables’ and Figures’ captions and headings must be self-explanatory. Do not forget to indicate the meaning of each acronym, and do not duplicate legends. Besides, names and units in the Figures' axes must always be added. Remember to add the name of the axis and indicate the units inside the parentheses.

            Figures have been revised and improved according to your suggestions. 

Please read again and carefully throughout the manuscript. It has typography mistakes, inadequate use of capital letters, and some missing blanks. Use subscripts or superscripts appropriately, where appropriate, throughout the document.

The whole ms has been carefully checked and mistakes were corrected upon our best knowledge. 

Please do not use more than three citations for each statement. When you use more than three citations in a statement, please only retain the newest three.

Thank you for pointing this out. We have carefully checked the whole text and found several occurrences in Table 1, and two cases in text; these have been revised and older references have been removed. 

The authors explain the reason for writing this manuscript, but the reasoning is severely flawed. The review is full of hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims.The authors present a very biased and uninformed view.The statements are excessively broad, and there are too many exceptions.

We have revisited the text and checked for possible bias. We refined our statements and specified the aims and hypotheses to emphasize the reasoning of the ms. 

The writing needs to be reviewed by a native English speaker. There are many grammatical errors, especially concerning plurals in subject-verb agreement.

            English use has been checked and improved by inviting expert colleagues to support the work. 

I detected a strong bias since the first paragraph of the manuscript.

We aimed at assessing the two systems based on scientific publications. We hope that the high number of references can enhance the reliability of our results. Additionally, we feel that there is also a possibility in such articles to scientific-based statements, which, besides the synthesis of already published knowledge, can contribute to the scientific value of the paper.

The manuscript has 250 references, but many are old and unnecessary. Please delete old and irrelevant references or replace them with newer ones.

The cited references have been revised and their number has been reduced. Older articles and less relevant ones have been removed. 

This manuscript must be retyped and reviewed by coauthors or colleagues and by an expert, native English-speaking scientist before resubmission.

Co-authors were involved into the revision of the manuscript in order to correct mistakes.

 The manuscript could be interesting, but this manuscript is a bunch of scientific information without logical order, not relevance. Therefore, there is no scientific contribution. Therefore, the authors are strongly advised to consider a substantial revision of the work. However, some mistakes indicated before require improvement before acceptance. Therefore, major revision is required.

We hope that the employed improvements are capable of enhancing the scientific value of this paper, and will be acceptable for you. Thank you again for your suggestions. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

There is no continuity in ideas. Section and subsection need to be reorganized.

            The structure of the paper has been revised and necessary changes have been made. 

Reviewer 2 Report

This review article by Csambalik et al. entitled “Organic versus controlled environment agriculture from a sustainability perspective”. This is a much informative review article. The authors have described this issue with chronological way. But the article is so long. Both organic and control agriculture environment play significant contribution on the food crisis in the world.

I have gone through the manuscript and I observed that this review is sufficient informative and it contains present status of organic and controlled environment agriculture, research gap, hypothetical interpretation of research gap and future insight. Although the authors have organized the review work perfectly, they have to address some queries:

 

Comments:

Title: This title is not so smart and attractive for the readers.

Abstract: This part should develop with mentioning future insights

Introduction: The authors should delete some unnecessary sentences. They have to mention mainly advantages and disadvantages between two assigned systems with the related references in this part. The authors should describe the gaps and future bridge of this research.   

Background: This part is too long with some unrelated sentences. The authors should write few important sentences from Line no 163-178. The authors failed to describe Figure 3 while it contains a lot of information.

All figure legends should be revised. Figure is always independent so, figure legends require description.

In conclusion section, the authors should revise precisely according to research title.

Finally, the review article is very long. The readers will feel boring and this will lose popularity to the readers. I suggest the authors that they should delete some less important part of this article. Moreover, the English language should be revised so that the readers can understand easily.

The English language of this manuscript should be improved.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

First, we would like to thank your work of reading through the manuscript and giving us suggestions to improve the quality of the publication.

Our research team has carefully read through your recommendations and upon our best knowledge we’ve made the corrections. We have also checked the English spelling and grammar and made corrections with track changes. Our answers are listed below.

 

But the article is so long.  

The article was reduced in its content, however, the suggested changes by reviewers meant further moderate extensions. 

Title: This title is not so smart and attractive for the readers.

Thank you for pointing this out. We have revised the title to “Sustainability perspectives of organic farming and plant factory systems - from divergences towards synergies”

Abstract: This part should develop with mentioning future insights

            Future insights have been added to this section, thank you for the suggestion.

Introduction: The authors should delete some unnecessary sentences. They have to mention mainly advantages and disadvantages between two assigned systems with the related references in this part. The authors should describe the gaps and future bridge of this research.  

Thank you for the suggestion, we have reduced this part to one and half pages, according to the suggestion of reviewers. A figure was added about the two systems to highlight divergences and convergences. 

Background: This part is too long with some unrelated sentences. The authors should write few important sentences from Line no 163-178. The authors failed to describe Figure 3 while it contains a lot of information.

The background section has been reduced, while the mentioned part has been retained with further clarifications. Additionally, Figure 3 has been analyzed in detail in the same subchapter. 

All figure legends should be revised. Figure is always independent so, figure legends require description.

            Figure and table captions have been revised and reworded. 

In conclusion section, the authors should revise precisely according to research title.

The conclusion section has been completely restructured, where we added more information about the novelty of this research, general take-away messages and recommendations for stakeholders and policy makers. Also, future perspectives have been outlined. 

Finally, the review article is very long. The readers will feel boring and this will lose popularity to the readers. I suggest the authors that they should delete some less important part of this article. Moreover, the English language should be revised so that the readers can understand easily.

Thank you for your suggestions. We have checked the whole text for less relevant parts and deleted them to make the article shorter. English use was also improved.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English language of this manuscript should be improved.

            We have made corrections to improve English use. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors

Please find some suggestions to improve the manuscript.

 

Although this paper is a review paper, please structure the manuscript in a scientific way, the current form is not suitable:

1. Introduction

2. Methods and Materials

3. Results (and Discussion)

4. Discussion

5. Conclusions

------

1. INTRODUCTION and 3. BACKGROUND

I suggest shortening the INTRODUCTION chapter to 1.5 pages.

Line 48-49: May I suggest you use "conventional agriculture" instead "intensive agriculture". Organic agriculture can also be "intensive" in its own way. Conventional is something that is done by the majority of average farmers. Both conventional and organic can be intensive or extensive.

Please, check the manuscript and replace wording throughout the text.

It is also good to note that from 2014 for the farmer to get EU CAP subsidy payment, he must cultivate land in an integrated way (so he has (should) to act based on observation of the crop state and avoid preventive use of fertilisers and pesticides).

Line 58: closed environment agriculture (CEA)

Is this system organic or conventional? Please clarify in the manuscript text.

Line 146: Please add aim/objective of the study at the end of the chapter.

2. Materials and Methods

Please separate in chapters 3.1 to 7, methods, results and discussion.

Currently, it is all mixed.

Prepare subchapters.

Clearly explain the methods of a literature review.

Keywords, number of papers found, how they were paper classified and grouped, etc.

--------

3. Results (and Discussion)

Form new chapters and subchapters, where you present only results made based on the review.

Line 497 - Table must have Title! This could be part of the Results section.

Figures 4 and 6 are something authors should build results on. I think that for all current chapters/subchapters 3-7, there should be one. You could also join them in one figure. To present the differences and similarities.

Figure 5 should be in 2. Methods and Materials, explaining the differences between the systems that the manuscript is based on.

-----

CONCLUSIONS

I propose to extend the text, by answering these questions:

Why is this research unique?

What are the shortcomings/uncertainties of this research?

What did the scientific community learn from it?

What are the benefits/recommendations for stakeholders (farmers or any other included in the process)?

What are the recommendations for policymakers/legislators?

Future work?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

First, we would like to thank your work of reading through the manuscript and giving us suggestions to improve the quality of the publication.

Our research team has carefully read through your recommendations and upon our best knowledge we’ve made the corrections. We have also checked the English spelling and grammar and made corrections with track changes. Our answers are listed below.

 

Although this paper is a review paper, please structure the manuscript in a scientific way, the current form is not suitable:

1. Introduction
2. Methods and Materials
3. Results (and Discussion)
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions

Thank you for the suggestion. The above structure has been employed for the manuscript. 

------

1. INTRODUCTION and 3. BACKGROUND

I suggest shortening the INTRODUCTION chapter to 1.5 pages.

Thank you for your suggestion, we have removed the less relevant parts and reduced it to the desired length.

Line 48-49: May I suggest you use "conventional agriculture" instead "intensive agriculture". Organic agriculture can also be "intensive" in its own way. Conventional is something that is done by the majority of average farmers. Both conventional and organic can be intensive or extensive. Please, check the manuscript and replace wording throughout the text.

Thank you for your clarification. We have checked the whole text and replaced intensive to conventional farming.

It is also good to note that from 2014 for the farmer to get EU CAP subsidy payment, he must cultivate land in an integrated way (so he has (should) to act based on observation of the crop state and avoid preventive use of fertilisers and pesticides).

            The suggested part about CAP has been integrated into the text, from line 104. 

Line 58: closed environment agriculture (CEA)

Is this system organic or conventional? Please clarify in the manuscript text.

            Issue clarified, thank you for pointing this out.

Line 146: Please add aim/objective of the study at the end of the chapter.

Objective and hypotheses were added at this section to the paper, we agree, that it is a key component, which has to be added here.

           

2. Materials and Methods

Please separate in chapters 3.1 to 7, methods, results and discussion. Currently, it is all mixed. Prepare subchapters.

We agreed to apply the ‘results and discussion’ approach in this section, as it was kindly suggested; according to this, the text has been rearranged. 

Clearly explain the methods of a literature review. Keywords, number of papers found, how they were paper classified and grouped, etc.

Thank you for your suggestions. We have added the details of the methodology in lines 159-170 along with further clarifications, by following the suggested points.

--------

3. Results (and Discussion)

Form new chapters and subchapters, where you present only results made based on the review.

The structure of the text has been rearranged and results and discussion form a common chapter in it. We aimed to conclude our finding in illustrations at the end of each subsection. 

Line 497 - Table must have Title! This could be part of the Results section.

            Thank you for the suggestion, we have added the caption for Table 1.

Figures 4 and 6 are something authors should build results on. I think that for all current chapters/subchapters 3-7, there should be one. You could also join them in one figure. To present the differences and similarities.

Thank you for the valuable advice. We have created additional figures with similar structure for subchapters 3.2 and 3.5.1. 

Figure 5 should be in 2. Methods and Materials, explaining the differences between the systems that the manuscript is based on.

The suggestion has been discussed with the co-authors; our aim here was to illustrate different alternatives especially for growing media use, therefore we feel appropriate to keep it in its original place. 

-----

CONCLUSIONS

I propose to extend the text, by answering these questions:

Why is this research unique?

What are the shortcomings/uncertainties of this research?

What did the scientific community learn from it?

What are the benefits/recommendations for stakeholders (farmers or any other included in the process)?

What are the recommendations for policymakers/legislators?

Future work?

 

The suggested structure was a great guide for rephrasing the conclusions part, thank you for this. We have restructured this part and included all the suggested aspects.

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Good job. The manuscript could be accepted in its current form.

Reviewer 2 Report

This review article by Csambalik et al. entitled “Organic versus controlled environment agriculture from a sustainability perspective”. I have gone through the manuscript and I found that the authors have addressed almost all queries properly and improved this manuscript significantly than the previous one. The English language should be revised.

The English language should be improved.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors

I do not have any further comments.

Best regards