Integrating Tillage and Mulching Practices as an Avenue to Promote Soil Water Storage, Growth, Production, and Water Productivity of Wheat under Deficit Irrigation in Arid Countries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Please find attached my comments and suggestions

many thanks

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer #1

The paper Integrating Tillage and Mulching Practices as an Avenue to Promote Soil Water Storage, Growth, Production, and Water Productivity of Wheat under Deficit Irrigation in Arid Countries is very interesting in the context of food security and limited water resources and provides information about integrating tillage and mulching practices on soil water storage and crop production increase. I found the Introduction section consistent reporting original data with sufficient research information for meet the interest of readership

Response: We greatly appreciate your critical observations as well as your constructive and helpful comments. We hope that we could address your questions/comments by the explanations and revisions made in the manuscript. We believe that the manuscript is substantially improved after making the suggested revisions.

• Use no tillage instead of non tillage

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. The no-tillage has been used instead non tillage through the manuscript.  

• In the experimental site, the soil characteristics try to put in a table and the content of macro nutrients and other parameters in mg kg-1 and or %.

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. The content of macronutrients has been expressed in mg kg^-1.   

• Line 246, two levels of tillage practices? What do you want to say? May be two types...

Response: Thank you very much for your comment and suggestion. The word “levels” has been changed to types.   

• Line 257, reformulate the sentence

Response: the sentence has been rewritten into “The CT practice consisting of three chisel plowing to a depth of 20–25 cm (Figure 1A) and two 60-cm diameter of narrow disking to a depth of 15 cm (Figure 1B), while the RT practice was done by perturbing the soil to a depth of 5 cm using a hand rotary cultivator.  

• Put the paragraph 260-266, after the sentence of line 249

Response: Paragraph 260-266 has been put after the sentence of line 249.  

• We have few information about the soil sampling,

Response: In this study, the soil samples were collected to monitor the soil water content in different tillage and mulching treatments. Because the monitoring the soil water content for different tillage and mulching practices in the limited irrigation regime (LM) is very important, the soil samples at the depth intervals of 0–20, 20–40, and 40–60 cm were collected in the LM regime at three time points, including before irrigation, a week after irrigation, and two weeks after irrigation.      

• In some equations you mentioned about the bulk density, how was the soil sampled for this analysis?

Response: Thank you very much for your comment. The information about how the soil samples were collected for determines the soil bulk density at different soil depths has been added. 

• The method of oven dry basis. Temperature? time? Which type of oven? Put all this information

Response: Thank you very much for your comment. The information about oven dry basis, temperature, time, and type of oven has been provided. 

• I consider the statistical evaluation of the results to be appropriate.

Response: We greatly appreciate your constructive and helpful comments. 

• The obtained results are appropriately discussed with the results of the related studies.

Response: We greatly appreciate your constructive and helpful comments.

• Are some typographical and grammatical errors, hence, the manuscript should be carefully checked and necessary corrections should be done

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. The manuscript has been carefully reviewed by an experienced editor whose first language is English and who specializes in editing papers written by scientists whose native language is not English (certifies below).

• The clarity of certain graphs must be improved (fig. 7)

Response: Thank you very much for your comment. The clarity of different graphs has been improved.

• Rewrite the conclusion section including a brief summary of your finding and future directions as well as improvements compared to already reported works.

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. Done

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The study deals with the important issue of ensuring food security in countries with water shortages. This study aimed to investigate the effects of reduced tillage compare to conventional tillge and different soil mulching practices.

The work is extensive (32 pages), well prepared and generally does not raise any major reservations.

Detailed comments:

- why the level of 0-20 cm was compared and not 0-5 cm separately; in the available literature, the study of soil properties is related to the depth of soil tillage, and in this case the reduced tillage was performed at 5 cm

- data in Figures 7, 8, 9 and 10 should be assessed by a specialist in the field of mathematical statistics - doubts are raised by 1st or 2nd degree regression curves which connect only two basic data sets; the distribution of these data is not uniform along the entire coordinate axis, and there are only low or high values

- the work is very extensive, but the decision on the permissible volume of work is up to the editorial office

- there are inaccuracies in the list of literature:

Lafond, G.P.; Stumborg, M.; Lemke, R.; May, W.E.; Holzapfel, C.B.; Campbell, C.A. Quantifying straw removal through 1433 baling and measuring the long-term impact on soil quality and wheat production. Agron. J. 2009, 101, 529-537.

Author Response

Reviewer #2

The study deals with the important issue of ensuring food security in countries with water shortages. This study aimed to investigate the effects of reduced tillage compare to conventional tillage and different soil mulching practices.

The work is extensive (32 pages), well prepared and generally does not raise any major reservations.

Response: We greatly appreciate your critical observations as well as your constructive and helpful comments. We hope that we could address your questions/comments by the explanations and revisions made in the manuscript. We believe that the manuscript is substantially improved after making the suggested revisions.

Detailed comments:

• why the level of 0-20 cm was compared and not 0-5 cm separately; in the available literature, the study of soil properties is related to the depth of soil tillage, and in this case the reduced tillage was performed at 5 cm

Response: Thank you very much for your comment. Because the monitoring the soil water content for different tillage and mulching practices in the limited irrigation regime (LM) is very important, the soil samples at the depth intervals of 0–20, 20–40, and 40–60 cm were collected in the LM regime at three time points, including before irrigation, a week after irrigation, and two weeks after irrigation. Therefore, there are several soil samples were collected to determine soil water content and to evaluate the soil water content between different tillage and mulching practices. Importantly, because this study was conducted in a typical arid country, which is characterized by high air temperature, the top 0–5 cm is always dry in the different treatments.         

• Data in Figures 7, 8, 9 and 10 should be assessed by a specialist in the field of mathematical statistics - doubts are raised by 1st or 2nd degree regression curves which connect only two basic data sets; the distribution of these data is not uniform along the entire coordinate axis, and there are only low or high values

Response: Thank you very much for your comment. The relationships that were done in Figures 7, 8, 9, and 10 have been done after We have already discussed them with a specialist in the field of mathematical statistics 

• The work is very extensive, but the decision on the permissible volume of work is up to the editorial office

Response: We greatly appreciate your constructive and helpful comments.     

• There are inaccuracies in the list of literature:

Lafond, G.P.; Stumborg, M.; Lemke, R.; May, W.E.; Holzapfel, C.B.; Campbell, C.A. Quantifying straw removal through baling and measuring the long-term impact on soil quality and wheat production. Agron. J. 2009, 101, 529-537.

Response: Thank you very much for your comment. The list of references has been checked carefully.  

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is interesting and alot of working has been done and in process on soil water storage in arid regions of the world. This issue is directly related with the issues of new emerging climate changes. The article is well written but i have some important suggestions for the improvement of this article.

General comments.

The start of introduction is very good but i am very surprized how you can write important text without any proper citation. Please add citations (line 49-63 citations are missing).

Line 69: Please add the below reference after (different agriculture strategies).

Akhtar, K.; Wang, W.; Khan, A.; Ren, G.; Afridi, M. Z.; Feng, Y.; Yang, G., Wheat straw mulching offset soil moisture deficient for improving physiological and growth performance of summer-sown soybean. Agricultural Water Management 2019, 211, 16-25.

Line 72-73: Covering the soil surface with different organic and inorganic mulch materials can reduce the amount of water lost through E, 

Please use the most suitable references for the above text.

e.g.,

Akhtar, K.; Wang, W.; Khan, A.; Ren, G.; Afridi, M. Z.; Feng, Y.; Yang, G., Wheat straw mulching with fertilizer nitrogen: An approach for improving soil water storage and maize crop productivity. Plant Soil and Environment 2018, 64, 330-337.

Line 86-94: The same information is repeated many times in your manuscript. I suggest to delete.

Line 136-138: Lines are without citation. Please add the below suitable citation of quality journals.

Akhtar, K.; Wang, W.; Ren, G.; Khan, A.; Nie, E.; Khan, A.; Feng, Y.; Yang, G.; Wang, H., Straw mulching with inorganic nitrogen fertilizer reduces soil CO2 and N2O emissions and improves wheat yield. Science of the Total Environment, 2020, 741, 140488. (IF= 7.963) (ISSN 1879-1026)

Kong, D.; Liu, N.; Wang, W.; Akhtar, K.; Li, N.; Ren, G.; Feng, Y.; Yang, G., Soil respiration from fields under three crop rotation treatments and three straw retention treatments. PloS one 2019, 14, e0219253-e0219253. (IF= 3.24)

Wang, W.; Akhtar, K.; Ren, G.; Yang, G.; Feng, Y.; Yuan, L., Impact of straw management on seasonal soil carbon dioxide emissions, soil water content, and temperature in a semi-arid region of China. Science of the Total Environment 2019, 652, 471-482. (IF5=7.963)

The introduction of this article is too long, i suggest to reduce upto 2-3 pages, and delete the repeated problems and repeated solutions.

Line 234: Please remove the word growing season.

Figure 1 showed the detail of different tillage (A, B, C) and the rest shows different techniques but have alot of confusion

e.g., The pictures are of which growth stage of wheat (Point 1). The tillage A results are very poor from the picture but in reality it is not like this, please explain or re-confirm tillage A pictures.

Tillage B pictures are some how same from some mulch treatments, please explain or re-confirm picture.

I suggest to write point 1 answer in the foot note of figure 1.

Please mention in the footnote that which picture produced good results, will be easy for the readers.

Line 204: Please write

Response of Soil Water Storage to Tillage and Mulching Practices

Figure 2 and 3: The presentation of data in figures are very good but please start your figures arrangement from 0-20, 20-40 and 40-60 and 0-60 cm. 

Figure 4: please remove the upper (top) horizontal line from figure. or it will be good if you close it such as figure 5.

Figure 7: please improve the quality and DPI.

Line 1039: Please avoid (B-bold text) and also do not use many citation for one sentence. Try to add 1-3 citation of quality journals.

The citations in discussion section are bold, please remove bold option.

Please avoid numbering text in conclusion part. I suggest to put your text in a single paragraph.

Good luck

Author Response

Reviewer #3

The article is interesting and a lot of working has been done and in process on soil water storage in arid regions of the world. This issue is directly related with the issues of new emerging climate changes. The article is well written but i have some important suggestions for the improvement of this article.

Response: We greatly appreciate your critical observations as well as your constructive and helpful comments. We hope that we could address your questions/comments by the explanations and revisions made in the manuscript. We believe that the manuscript is substantially improved after making the suggested revisions.

General comments:

• The start of introduction is very good but i am very surprised how you can write important text without any proper citation. Please add citations (line 49-63 citations are missing).

Response: Thank you very much for your comment. The citations for line 49-63 have been provided.

• Line 69: Please add the below reference after (different agriculture strategies).

Akhtar, K.; Wang, W.; Khan, A.; Ren, G.; Afridi, M. Z.; Feng, Y.; Yang, G., Wheat straw mulching offset soil moisture deficient for improving physiological and growth performance of summer-sown soybean. Agricultural Water Management 2019, 211, 16-25.

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. This reference has been added accordingly.

• Line 72-73: Covering the soil surface with different organic and inorganic mulch materials can reduce the amount of water lost through E, Please use the most suitable references for the above text.

e.g.,

Akhtar, K.; Wang, W.; Khan, A.; Ren, G.; Afridi, M. Z.; Feng, Y.; Yang, G., Wheat straw mulching with fertilizer nitrogen: An approach for improving soil water storage and maize crop productivity. Plant Soil and Environment 2018, 64, 330-337.

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. This reference has been added accordingly.

• Line 86-94: The same information is repeated many times in your manuscript. I suggest to delete.

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. This paragraph is very important because we want to draw the reader's attention to the knowledge of the relative importance of each agricultural strategy mentioned above this paragraph.  .  

• Line 136-138: Lines are without citation. Please add the below suitable citation of quality journals.

Akhtar, K.; Wang, W.; Ren, G.; Khan, A.; Nie, E.; Khan, A.; Feng, Y.; Yang, G.; Wang, H., Straw mulching with inorganic nitrogen fertilizer reduces soil CO2 and N2O emissions and improves wheat yield. Science of the Total Environment, 2020, 741, 140488. (IF= 7.963) (ISSN 1879-1026)

Kong, D.; Liu, N.; Wang, W.; Akhtar, K.; Li, N.; Ren, G.; Feng, Y.; Yang, G., Soil respiration from fields under three crop rotation treatments and three straw retention treatments. PloS one 2019, 14, e0219253-e0219253. (IF= 3.24)

Wang, W.; Akhtar, K.; Ren, G.; Yang, G.; Feng, Y.; Yuan, L., Impact of straw management on seasonal soil carbon dioxide emissions, soil water content, and temperature in a semi-arid region of China. Science of the Total Environment 2019, 652, 471-482. (IF5=7.963)

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. These references have been added accordingly.

• The introduction of this article is too long, i suggest to reduce upto 2-3 pages, and delete the repeated problems and repeated solutions.

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. The introduction includes sufficient and important information to meet the interest of the readership regarding the practices of tillage and mulching with different materials. In the Introduction section, we have mentioned the advantage and disadvantages of different mulching treatments. We also have mentioned the chemical analysis of different plant materials. This information is important to mention because we have used different materials for mulching practices.

• Line 234: Please remove the word growing season.

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. The word “growing season” has been deleted.

• Figure 1 showed the detail of different tillage (A, B, C) and the rest shows different techniques but have a lot of confusion

e.g., The pictures are of which growth stage of wheat (Point 1). The tillage A results are very poor from the picture but in reality it is not like this, please explain or re-confirm tillage A pictures.

Tillage B pictures are some how same from some mulch treatments, please explain or re-confirm picture.

I suggest to write point 1 answer in the foot note of figure 1.

Please mention in the footnote that which picture produced good results, will be easy for the readers.

Response: Thank you very much for your comment. In Figure 1, we needed to present how to apply the two types of tillage practices (Figures 1 A, B, and C), while in Figures 1 E, F, G, and H, we compared the different mulching practices at the different growth stages of wheat crop irrespective of tillage practices under LM regime. The pictures from D to H present the wheat growth under different mulching practices at the different wheat growth stages. 

• Line 204: Please write, Response of Soil Water Storage to Tillage and Mulching Practices

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. Done

• Figures 2 and 3: The presentations of data in figures are very good but please start your figures arrangement from 0-20, 20-40 and 40-60 and 0-60 cm. 

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. Done

• Figure 4: please remove the upper (top) horizontal line from figure. or it will be good if you close it such as figure 5.

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. The top horizontal line has been deleted.

• Figure 7: please improve the quality and DPI.

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. The resolution of Figure 7 has been improved

• Line 1039: Please avoid (B-bold text) and also do not use many citation for one sentence. Try to add 1-3 citation of quality journals.

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. The B-bold text has been avoided in discussion section.

• The citations in discussion section are bold, please remove bold option.

Response: Thank you very much for your comment. The bold number of citations in discussion section has been changed

• Please avoid numbering text in conclusion part. I suggest to put your text in a single paragraph.

Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. The conclusion part has been merged in one paragraph.