Early Relay Intercropping of Short-Season Cotton Increases Lint Yield and Earliness by Improving the Yield Components and Boll Distribution under Wheat-Cotton Double Cropping

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a very interesting and comprehensive study about the performance to evaluate the relay intercropping of short-season cotton based on cotton yield, earliness and fiber quality from 2016 to 2018 in China under. My recommendation is minor  revision, so the authors should add more information and analysis to increase the quality and relevance of the manuscript, because is not novel and informative enough. The contributions presented by this paper are relevant, but many issues should be correct. The material and methods section might be re-written to do them much easier to understand. Additionally, discussion might be improved a little bit according to next comment. I hope these reviews are useful to improve the quality of this paper.

In the next paragraphs, I explain the mayor and minor comments. In additional, although I am not a native, but I consider that the manuscript should be read and edited by a native English speaker to improve the English language.

General comments

1. The introduction and discussion section are poorly described, the authors should include more details and comparisons on other similar studies worldwide, the relevance of short-season cotton and wheat crops in production systems, new opportunities to increase productivity and competitively and the golds associated with the knowledge of new alternatives as the treatments suggested. In addition, is necessary add information about quality and productivity parameters associated with treatments. On the other hand, the importance stationarity and climatic variability status on productions status of cotton should be explained in the Introduction section so that the reader understands why the hypothesis planted is being investigated.
2. I am not sure that evaluation of a cotton and wheat cultivar in only one plot give stronger evidence to answer the hypothesis planted , traditionally, these assays needed been evaluated from many regions in multiple plots under contrasting condition, especially under current high variability climatic condition. Is necessary to know the performance of cotton and hypothesis planted cultivars under other parameters associated with different soil condition, climatic variables, contrasting anthropic management, among others.
3. The quality variables evaluated on treatments were poorly, only was focus on fiber quality. I stronger suggest that authors evaluated others quality parameters.
4. There is also general confusion as to which materials and methods and corresponding results are adequate to use by growers, government and consumers. More details are also needed to describe the analysis of the data so readers can ensure their appropriateness for the type of data presented. Additional attention to detail is needed to improve the overall quality of manuscript including the small detail about concept in crops modeling, sampling, data uses, statistics analysis and software used. The quality of the figures and tables also needs attention, because there are not stand on.
5. Sentences are generally too long and should be broken down into two or more shorter sentences. There are very many similar issues largely associated with grammar, typos and other English language aspects.
6. Some parts of the discussion are most focused as an introduction than as a discussion of the main results. Additionally, I miss a greater cohesion among the different paragraphs of the discussion section with the main results of this study, as well as a stronger conclusion.

1. One final general comment – it appears that the authors have spent much time and effort collecting what appears to be a very large and potentially highly informative body of evidence. For that, I commend them. However, the manuscript in its current form does not fully present and interpret the results from this data set.

Minor revision

Title

My suggestion is change the title, because is confusing and in part not represent the scope of manuscript.

Abstract

Try to be specific and write a paragraph more informative, because is very confused the aim, and the relationship between the cultivar performance under specific conditions where it was evaluated. In addition, you can add more information based in data (statistical, among others). On the other hand, the summary is too long.

Introduction

The introduction is poorly described. My suggestion is that you add more information about important aspects that could justify the work (e, j., origin of problem of the avocado productions, natural species in the regions, Hass performance, and quality parameters, among others).

My suggestion is that aim and hypothesis should be presented very clearly. In addition is necessary improve, because currently these are very wordy and confusing, in especial the roll of the approach used.

Material and Methods

Add information about edaphic variables in the experimental plot. In addition, variables associated to crop management needed to add. Also, it would be useful to know which was employing under this work.

The procedures for assessing each variables should be described with details. In particular, how were the samples prepared for assessment? Were they cut longitudinally into halves or quarters? Were they peeled?

Sampling for analysis were small and has not been explained in sufficient detail. How many parts of plants were samples? Were these the same plants used in the quality assessments? Were the assessments conducted on tissue from individual plants or a pooled sample? How many samples were collected and from what position relative to the sampled crops and plot?

I stronger suggest that the authors explain better the model used, example: assumption of statistical and mathematical concepts because under this version the model was not objective under scientific approach.

Result and discussion

The discussion and conclusion show a limited understanding of the mechanisms involved in the performance of treatments investigated in the study. Also, a better understanding of the mechanisms of response of this cultivar under climatic and edaphic condition devalued would aid the interpretation of results. I urge the authors to read all relevant scientific literature and re-write these sections.

Conclusion

The author should improve the conclusion and focus on the most important data of the study. The conclusions presented do not represent the importance of the research work.

Figure

Poor resolution and need to be compressible standalone

Author Response

please see the attatchment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

Intercropping is used in many countries. It has many advantages and is one of the elements of sustainable agriculture, as it allows for more efficient use of environmental resources. The effectiveness of intercropping depends on many factors, one of which is the proper selection of crop species and their distribution, including taking into account the date of sowing of individual species and the length of the period of inter-species interaction. Therefore, I think that the problem raised in the research is interesting. But, after reading the manuscript, I have a few comments

Line [15-44] - you need to shorten the abstract

Line [68] - improve citation

Line [74] - convert d to days (applies to all manuscript)

Line [115-116] - add an experiment diagram showing the arrangement of rows of plants, the distance between the row of wheat and cotton, etc.

Line [120-121] - the yield of wheat should not be given in the methodology, but in the results.

Line [124] - please do not use the S4 abbreviation only CAW (applies to the entire manuscript). Such an alternating use of different designations may mislead the reader.

Line [131-134] - Please specify how much of the component (N, P, K) was used in mineral fertilization in wheat. The same goes for fertilizing cotton.

Line [133] - the authors say 'panicle fertilization' I don't get it. Please provide the development phase according to BBCH scale.

Graphs 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 show the results for 2017 and 2018. What about 2016. In the 'Materials and methods' chapter, there is no information that some tests were not performed in 2016. Please complete this and explain why.

In table 3, please provide mean values and sources of variation as in tables 2 and 5

One of the indicators used to evaluate the efficiency of the coordinate crops is the Land Equivalent Ratio. It allows taking into account the yield of both species in intercropping. It is worth for the authors to calculate this indicator for the combinations tested in the experiment. This will enable a reliable assessment of the effectiveness of this system. It is not sufficient to rely on results for one species when assessing intercropping system.

Author Response

please see the attachment. thank you for your helpful comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx