Integrating Field Data and a Modeling Approach to Inform Optimum Planting Date × Maturity Group for Soybeans under Current and Future Weather Conditions in Kansas

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript provides a quantification of the optimum planting date by soybean maturity group combinations under current and future weather in the western border of the main US soybean producing region. The topic is interesting and the methods used in the manuscript is sound. However, I still found some problems. I suggest it could be improved for the manuscript in current state and can be published after minor revised.

1.     Several Tables and Figures should be in supplementary, whereas they were included in the manuscript.

2.     The Table 1 could not found in the manuscript.

3.     The authors should give a list about the parameters for the groups of soybean used in the APSIM, therefore other could compare the results with theirs.

4.     The fixed value to terminate the soybean growing season was not given. This date is important for yield formation in crop model simulation. The authors also should give the reason why use this date not other.

5.     It seems the soybean yield is related with precipitation closely. I suggest that the authors should compare the results with other in the Discussion part.

Author Response

1. Several Tables and Figures should be in supplementary, whereas they were included in the manuscript.

Response: Thanks for your time and effort to read our manuscript. Regarding this comment, it is not clear to us. The reviewer mentions several tables in the manuscript that should be included in the supplementary material, yet the manuscript has only one table (line 225).  Unfortunately, we are not able to address this comment. If the reviewer can provide more details, we will be able to address this comment in the next version. Lastly, in this new version we have 7 supplementary tables and 4 figures.

2. The Table 1 could not found in the manuscript.

Response: Thanks for your correction, and we apologize for the mistake in the table name.   In line 208, the remarks to “Table 1”, are now changed to “Supplementary Table S1”. In addition, the table termed as Table 2, was now updated and renamed as Table 1.

3. The authors should give a list about the parameters for the groups of soybean used in the APSIM, therefore other could compare the results with theirs.

Response: Thanks for your comment. We use the generic genotypes included in APSIM next generation for our four groups (Generic_MG3, Generic_MG4, Generic_MG5, Generic_MG6), as mentioned in lines 126-130. We agree that including not only the reference, but the actual values will facilitate the comparison of the genetic coefficients in future research. Therefore, we have included a supplementary Table for all the genetic parameters for each soybean maturity group, please see the Supplementary Table S3.

4. The fixed value to terminate the soybean growing season was not given. This date is important for yield formation in crop model simulation. The authors also should give the reason why use this date not other.

Response: Thanks for your comment. We apologize as the explanation was not clear. The soybean growing season was terminated at the observed harvest day, when this information was available. Therefore, this date varied depending on the experiment tested in the simulation. We have rephrased the paragraph as follows: lines 131-134: "Due to the lack of capability of APSIM Next-Generation to represent the early termination of the crop cycle due to frost events, the crop growing season was terminated at the observed harvest day when this date was available (Supplementary Table S1).”

5. It seems the soybean yield is related with precipitation closely. I suggest that the authors should compare the results with other in the Discussion part.

Response: We appreciate your comment. Lines 346-351 addressing this comment were included in the discussion. Lines 346-351: “Furthermore, previous studies suggest that water deficit is one of the main causes of the yield gap (Battisti et al., 2018; Zhou et al., 2021). Likewise, our study reflected comparable reductions in yield with less seasonal precipitation.”

Reviewer 2 Report

Although the message from the research is an affirmation of general concepts related to agriculture and climate change and the advancement of the date of crop cultivation However, I agree to publish this research regarding the soybeans as a statistical evidence for these concepts

Author Response

Response: Thank you, we appreciate your kind words regarding our manuscript. Thanks for your time and efforts on revising our manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report

For me, it would be fine if you write the differences between the maturity groups (how many days of vegetation of soybean of maturity groups III and IV and V)? Sometimes planting day was between 120 and 160 days of the year (Topeka) and 150-180 DOY (Erie, Parsons) and only Rossville (150-153)?

Not clear are some data,you take to analyze:

you write: "comparing current (2011-2021) and future (2042-2052) weather" (v.19) and than in Material and Methods: "long-term weather records (1984-2021) ... were used" (v. 96),  future weather data 2022-2052 (v. 144) ? This causes confusion in the reception of information.

 

Author Response

Reviewer: For me, it would be fine if you write the differences between the maturity groups (how many days of vegetation of soybean of maturity groups III and IV and V)? Sometimes planting day was between 120 and 160 days of the year (Topeka) and 150-180 DOY (Erie, Parsons) and only Rossville (150-153)?

Response: Thank you for your comment. We have included a Supplementary Table S3 that shows the genetic parameters used for APSIM. This table describes for each group the duration of the growing stages expressed in °Cd. Regarding the second question, the range of planting dates mentioned in lines 89-92 is the observed data available for the validation of the model.

Reviewer: Not clear are some data,you take to analyze:

Reviewer: you write: "comparing current (2011-2021) and future (2042-2052) weather" (v.19) and than in Material and Methods: "long-term weather records (1984-2021) ... were used" (v. 96),  future weather data 2022-2052 (v. 144) ? This causes confusion in the reception of information.

Response: Thanks for your correction, we agree that the explanation of the use of the weather data was confusing.

The long-term weather data records retrieved from 1984 to 2021 with two proposes i) to classify the weather in each site, to create the geospatial clusters (maximum temperature and precipitation) (section 2.2), and ii) to create the weather seasonality required to build the future weather data (Section 2.4). Finally, for developing scenarios for yield stability for the current and future weather (section 2.4), We have only used the last decade of the current weather (2011-2021) and the last decade of the future weather (2042-2052) in order to contrast the current and future weather.

To clarify the explanation, the paragraph starting on lines 93 to lines 103 and the paragraph starting on lines 174 to 182 were changed.