Field Incubation Studies on Nutrient Mineralization of Bagasse on Spodosols and Histosols in Florida

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I read the manuscript and found it interesting. However, I suggest major revisions before accepting the manuscript.

My comments are:  

1.      Check the abbreviations throughout the manuscript and introduce the abbreviation when the full word appears the first time in the text and then use only the abbreviation (For example, see line 33, 35 for nitrogen (N) and potassium (K)). And it should be in both abstract as well as in the remaining part of the manuscript. Make a word abbreviated in the article that is repeated at least three times in the text, not all words need to be abbreviated.

2.      In line 68, please write the name of author and then their respective citation, like, “According to Xu and coworkers……………………………..[8]. Follow the same style throughout the manuscript.

3.      It is highly recommended to put some pictures of the installation of mesh bags in the filed for incubation. This will help the readers to fully understand the methodology.

4.      The authors are recommended to make a map of geographical locations of study area (section 2.1).

5.      The authors are suggested to make the illustration of mesh bags technique and installation (Lines 128-134).

6.      Line 174, one way or two way analysis of variance was used?

7.      Is the recommended dose of chemical fertilizers for sugarcane was applied? If yes, please mention it in the methodology. If not, then how the bagasse can fulfill the nutritional requirements of sugarcane?

8.      The conclusion is confusing; there is no significant comparison of both soils for sugarcane production. Is spodosols is recommended for sugarcane production? If not? Then elaborate it in the conclusion and give some further research recommendations.

9.      Please check the manuscript for grammatical, structural and punctuation errors.

Author Response

Comment 1: Check the abbreviations throughout the manuscript and introduce the abbreviation when the full word appears the first time in the text and then use only the abbreviation (For example, see line 33, 35 for nitrogen (N) and potassium (K)). And it should be in both abstract as well as in the remaining part of the manuscript. Make a word abbreviated in the article that is repeated at least three times in the text, not all words need to be abbreviated.

Response 1: Thank you for your comment. We revised the abbreviations throughout the manuscript based on your suggestions.

Comment 2: In line 68, please write the name of author and then their respective citation, like, “According to Xu and coworkers……………………………..[8]. Follow the same style throughout the manuscript.

Response 2: We revised the citations throughout the manuscript based on your suggestions.

Comment 3: It is highly recommended to put some pictures of the installation of mesh bags in the filed for incubation. This will help the readers to fully understand the methodology.

Response 3: We added two pictures shown the installation of mesh bags in the Material and Methods part, section 2.3 (line 140-141).

Comment 4. The authors are recommended to make a map of geographical locations of study area (section 2.1).

Response 4: We added a map of study locations in section 2.1 (line 118).

Comment 5. The authors are suggested to make the illustration of mesh bags technique and installation (Lines 128-134).

Response 5: We added two pictures as your suggested in section 2.3 which illustrates the mesh bags technique and installation (line 140-141).

Comment 6. Line 174, one way or two way analysis of variance was used?

Response 6: Two way analysis of variance was used (line 183).

Comment 7. Is the recommended dose of chemical fertilizers for sugarcane was applied? If yes, please mention it in the methodology. If not, then how the bagasse can fulfill the nutritional requirements of sugarcane?

Response 7: Yes, over the entire period of this study (the first year/plant cane year), sugarcane was received standard chemical fertilizers based on recommendations for commercial sugarcane production in South Florida (line 145-147).

Comment 8. The conclusion is confusing; there is no significant comparison of both soils for sugarcane production. Is spodosols is recommended for sugarcane production? If not? Then elaborate it in the conclusion and give some further research recommendations.

Response 8: In South Florida, approximately 71.1% of the crop is grown on Histosols in the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) in 2020/21 while the remaining occurs on mineral soils, mainly Entisols, Alfisols, and Spodosols, as stated in the introduction part (line 41-43). Although Histosols are better for cultivating sugarcane because of its high productivity to support greater yields, the soil subsidence due to organic matter oxidation limited the expansion of sugarcane production on this organic soil. Thus, an increasing number of sugarcane has been grown on less productive mineral soils in recent years.

Comment 9: Please check the manuscript for grammatical, structural and punctuation errors.

Response 9: Thank you for your comment and we checked based on your suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The work does not correspond to the level of scientific publication. The methodology is written incorrectly. There are no literature references. The description of the analysis is incomplete. Figures are hard to read, they should be replaced with tables. You will be able to read the obtained values better. They are the most important. For this type of experiment, the research time is short. It is not precisely defined. Comparing the results for buried and unburied mesh bags. You can easily predict what the difference will be. The role of the roots is known. In the discussion only a comparison with other plants. If there was no bagasse research in the world, it needs to be written. There are many comments in the text. The work must be greatly improved.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comment 1: The work does not correspond to the level of scientific publication. The methodology is written incorrectly. There are no literature references. The description of the analysis is incomplete. Figures are hard to read, they should be replaced with tables. You will be able to read the obtained values better. They are the most important. For this type of experiment, the research time is short. It is not precisely defined. Comparing the results for buried and unburied mesh bags. You can easily predict what the difference will be. The role of the roots is known. In the discussion only a comparison with other plants. If there was no bagasse research in the world, it needs to be written. There are many comments in the text. The work must be greatly improved.

Response 1: Thank you for your comments. We improved the material and method part by adding references based on your detailed comments in pdf file. We used figures to present our results because figures are more clearly to show the patterns/trends of decomposition and nutrient release compared to the tables even though we cannot read the exactly obtained values from the figures. In order to accomadate the reviewers concern we have included data in table form in supplemental files.  To determine the release patterns is the major purpose of this study. This research was defined to study for the period of plant cane year of sugarcane, which is usually about 400 to 450 days. No studies have been conducted to determine the decomposition and nutrient release patterns of bagasse. But it can be considered as a type of plant residue, thus comparing our results with previous studies that studied other plants is OK.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I accept this manuscript for publication in Agriculture because the authors took into account every suggestion I made.

Author Response

Thank you for accepting our research.

Reviewer 2 Report

The work is slightly improved. There is no information about statistical calculations. Charts are difficult to read, they should be replaced with tables. You will be able to read the obtained values better. Comparing the results for buried and unburied mesh bags. You can easily predict what the difference will be. The role of the roots is known. In the discussion only a comparison with other plants. If there was no bagasse research in the world, it needs to be written. Only requests are accepted. Many comments are still marked in the text. The work must be much improved. Tables should be included in the text and not as a supplement.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Responses: Thank you for your comments. We feel the manuscript is much improved based on the suggestions provided by the reviewer. We compared the results for buried and unburied mesh bags throughout the results and discussion section, and basically the conclusions are 1) bagasse was decomposed faster when buried compared to unburied; 2) buried bags were more likely to experience immobilization process but finally the nutrients released more when buried. Previous studies reported that root exudate components could stimulate residue decomposition. However, we didn’t detect this finding in our study. Actually, in the current study, on Day 130 and 190 in Histosols, significantly more bagasse was released in fallow fields compared with sugarcane system when it either buried or placed on the surface. Our result suggests that temperature could be the primary factor to affect bagasse decomposition rate in Florida since fallow fields are exposed more to the sun, which results in a higher temperature compared with sugarcane system with canopy (line 317-323). No studies have been conducted to determine the decomposition and nutrient release pattern of bagasse, so we cannot compare our results with previous studies that were determining bagasse decomposition. Since bagasse can be considered as a type of plant residue, from this perspective, it should be OK to compare it with other plants. We double checked your comments and make more improvements as you requested. Also, the references have been checked with the list to be accurate.

We have retained the figures because we strongly feel that the reader will gain first from visual trends in the data, for example, slope of trends decrease or increase, and can use the raw data provided in the supplemental files as tables for future modeling or comparison purposes.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx