Alfalfa Cover Crops Influence the Soil Fungal Community and Function in Apple Orchards in Arid Desert Oases in Northwest China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Accepted for me 

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Dear Authors,

I am satisfied with the corrections. You have incorporated all the corrections as suggested. I strongly recommend the publication of the manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Please see my comments on the revised manuscript. The paper is not ready yet and needs the following from my own analyses:

1. The paper needs more citations in some areas/sentences, especially with the methods used under the Materials & Methods section.
2. So many areas missing commas, and some sentences are confusing or the terms are not scientific.
3. The conclusion section needs more information or wording.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thank you very much for your careful review of the manuscript and your valuable comments. Now I reply to your comments as follows.

1. Different values of p represent different meanings, p<0.05 indicates significant difference, and p<0.01 indicates extremely significant difference.
2. Commented [M2]: Citation needed here. [1] Gao, W. H.; Yang, L. Xinjiang Statistical Yearbook. Urumqi, Xinjiang: China Statistics Press, 2018, 358.
3.  

Divide into two: Cover crops play an important role in improving soil fertility [6], increasing soil cov-erage, reducing surface runoff [7], protecting soil physical conditions, improving soil aeration [8]. In addition increasing apple orchard biodiversity, maintaining apple or-chard ecological balance [9], promoting fruit tree growth, and improving apple quality and yield [10].

4. The microbes involved in enzymatic hydrolysis processes are the essence of cover crop degradation, and soil microbes play an important role. The following sentence is an explanation of this sentence.” The decomposition of residues that affect the metabolism of nitrogen, carbon, and other elements in apple orchards is driven by the structures and functions of microbial communities [11,12]”.
5. Commented [M5]: Citation needed here. [13]Duchene, O.; Vian, J. F.; Celette, F. Intercropping with legume for agroecological cropping systems: Complementarity and facilitation processes and the importance of soil microorganisms. A review. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. 2017, 240, 148-161.
6. Commented [M6]: Is this written properly? Why the small “c” and capital “B” for bacteria.

Sorry, I wrote an extra letter.

7. The year 2015 here refers to the time when the orchard was established, and no experiment was conducted. The experiment started in 2019.
8.  

The above test method has been quoted, which refers to [16].

9. In order to avoid the repetition of language, the references used in the determination methods of macroelements in soil are marked only once.

10 This is another property of soil, so references are specially marked.

11. This sentence cannot stand as is, needs to be rewritten or completed.

Rewrite as follows:

 In order to ensure the authenticity and credibility of the data, all the above experiments of soil properties were repeatedly analyzed and tested for 3 times, and the average value was taken.

12. Re-modified the expression and changed it to diversity.
13.  

This expression is intended to explain the differences between different experimental results, in which different values of p represent different meanings, p<0.05 indicates significant differences, and p<0.01 indicates extremely significant differences.

This sentence is a summary of the following discussion, so no references are cited.

The decrease of uniformity means that the distribution of microorganisms in the soil is unbalanced due to grass mulching.

  Agreed, thank you very much for your valuable suggestions.

Thank you very much for your suggestion, agree with it and make changes.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I would like to appreciate your sincere effort in bringing out the manuscript "Alfalfa Cover.....................................Desert Oases in Northwest China". You have very well compared the changes in the fungal community, structure, diversity and metabolic function in the 0-60 cm soil layer of apple orchard under open and cover crop with alfalfa.

You have shown soil chemical properties in table 1 but in the text, you have mentioned the physical and chemical properties of soil. So, either you add some physical soil properties or just skip the word physical.  

You must add the references of all the soil chemical analyses performed. You must clearly say whether the values for soil micro and secondary nutrients reflect the total or are they the available values.

The most annoying thing I could find is that you have mentioned a number of references that are missing in the text. So, please remove them. Also, add some of the references which are mentioned in the text but missing in the reference section.

There are some typographical mistakes that need to be taken care of. Also you must follow standard units in your text.

I have highlighted those mistakes in the text. Please do go through it and do those corrections.

Reviewer 2 Report

I commend the authors of the manuscript titled “Alfalfa Cover Crops Influence the Soil Fungal Community and  Function in Apple Orchards in Arid Desert Oases in Northwest  China” for their work on Alfalafa as cover crop in apple orchards.

Before this manuscript is published, there are several things need to be addressed or corrected:

• In the title: the NGS usually shows all fungi, bacteria, animals and insects. The fungi is allows associated with bacteria, why the bacteria is missing in the title?
• In the abstract: the abstract is very long and need to be concise and short.
• In the introduction:
• A detailed literature on apple orchards natural microbial diversity, Alfalfa as cover crop, other crops used as cover crops and their influences on microbial diversity should be mentioned
• The introduction should be at least 4 targeted paragraphs.

• In the material and methods:
• The data about bacterial diversity is missing?!
• In the results
• Where is the data of the bacteria community and diversity in the soil?

Reviewer 3 Report

Overall, the paper sounds scientific and well organized. However, it needs some minor revision with few more citations/references, and "please put the in-text citations in logical order, for example in the Introduction section, you cite like this: (Daryanto et al., 2018; Du et al. 2014; Yao et al. 2005).  Then in the discussion section, you cite the other way like this: (Elfstand  et al., 2007; Caban et al., 2018). This is not consistent, either go with authors last  name first, or by the year of publication. Please see my comments on the manuscript. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf