Application of Selenium Can Alleviate the Stress of Cadmium on Rapeseed at Different Growth Stages in Soil

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study is a piece of a good work and provide interesting information about role of Se in maintain the co-microbial community of rapeseed under Cd contamination and the potential of Se as tool adjust microbe status for clean cultivation of rapeseed. Results are well represented achieved with adequate methodology and conceptually discussed. There are Some minor suggestions to improve the paper:  

1-In sampling section for Cd determination some details should be added regarding quality assurance/quality control; - i.e. what controls were used? what detection limits were determined? were certified standards employed? How many internal duplicates were run?

2-Many typos are detected throughout the manuscript such as in L 232, 233, 234. Please, check and correct 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors in this study have investigated the effet of adding selenium on reducing the toxic impact of cadmium on plants. In addition, they have studied the impact of adding selenium on the microbial diversity of soil. Generally, this stidy is information-rich and add a value to research. I advise publishing with minor modifications. 

Please, pay attention to section 3.5 and 3.6 in section results. There were a redundancy in these two paragraphs.

Kind regards

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Manuscript entitled "Application of selenium can alleviate the stress of cadmium on rapeseed at different growth stages in soil" submitted to Agronomy focuses on research on the effect of exogenous selenium on reducing cadmium toxicity in rapeseed crops. For this purpose, selected agrotechnical parameters and the structure and diversity of soil bacteria were determined. The topic is very important in terms of achieving a safe crop free of cadmium, which is toxic to animals and humans. However, the manuscript needs of deep editorial revision, it is chaotically written without maintaining the journal requirements and general rules of text writing (no spaces, etc.). The methodology and analysis of the results is very generally written and needs more detail. There is also a lack of performance of Spearman or Pearson correlation analysis to detect the relationship between the microbiome and soil physico-chemical properties. Therefore, the manuscript needs major revision

General comments

Please format the text according to the journal's requirements

Please improve the figures quality.

Detailed comments:

Introduction

1.       Line 70: Please explain “GSHPX” abbreviation

2.       Please emphasise more and explain what the novelty of your research is.

Materials and methods

1.       Please explain what the selenium doses were based on?

2.       Please describe the sampling methodology in detail (e.g. how many samples were taken, how they were taken, how many replicates, what constituted the average sample)?

3.       Please provide a citation for the methodology for the determination of cadmium. Please provide details of the reference material.

4.        

Results

1.       Tables and figures: Please explain in the footer of the table/figure caption what the letters next to the averages mean

2.       Line 197: Which indices were calculated as alpha diversity? This is not mentioned in the “Materials and methods” section. This should be completed.

3.       Please explain the statistical methods used (e.g. Amova, Kruskal Wallis!!!!! test) in the Materials and methods section

4.        

Discussion

1.       Lines 368-371: Was chlorophyll content determined in the presented studies? In my opinion, this should be removed. The discussion should focus on comparing our own results with the results of other researchers. Therefore, please follow this rule and rewrite the entire "Discussion" section.

2.       Lines 395-396: “The results show that selenium has a strong impact on the incidence rate of rot mold”- The article did not examine the fungal community, this sentence should be removed.

3.       Line 413: remove “microbial”

 Conclusion

Please indicate what is needed to be investigated in the future in terms of the presented research.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for response to my comments. Now the manuscript looks better and may be published in present form.