Cultivating Biodiversity to Harvest Sustainability: Vermicomposting and Inoculation of Microorganisms for Soil Preservation and Resilience

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In my opinion the original idea of the paper is fine but there are some methodological limitations. The experiment is focused on comparing three different vermicompost treatments. However, these vermicompost were not applied to any soil or crops, which could help to highlight the value of the different vermicompost, specially those with microorganisms added. Focusing only on the vermicompost it makes more complex the study and some sections lacks detailed comparisons.  

I presume the authors are young researchers which makes more comprehensible some important mistakes but must be corrected to be published in any paper. Examples are the use of colons instead of decimal points, inconsistency in the number of decimal values in tables, confusing median with mean, not appropriate use  of the term variability.  

Some modifications suggested are:

Tables. It’s fine that you indicate with *, **, ** the strength of the significance, but later you can use letters (a,b,c) to show the differences among the different vermicompost.  Besides, change “Commercial Vermicompost” with “Commercial Microorganisms Vermicompost”

Sections 2.3 and 2.4 are incomplete. More detailed information is required, specially for microorganisms determination.

Footnote of Table 6. It’s not clear what the ** mean for B, Cu, Mn regarding your values.

Lines246-248. Check electrical conductivity units in the text.

Discussion. In general, is limited. General comments, more appropriate for the introduction are listed, later the values obtained for the different vermicompost are checked to meet some requirements or compared with other studies, but not hypothesis about why the differences among the vermicompost studied occur are included and that is the aim of this study.

Section 5 corresponds to Results, not discussion. The principal component analyses worries me. I have never seen that with only two axes can explain the 100% of variability.    Having a look to the Figure 1 I see only three points showing the samples, so I understand that no replicates are include or done, which makes useless the results.

Section conclusions. Conclusions must be derived from you data and no general statements can be included. Conclusions 3,6,7 don’t meet the criteria and the other are few specificic.

Rename the table showed in the Appendix A like Table S1. S refers to supplementary.

Finally, it is necessary  to make references to tables and charts when data of them are showed in the text of the results and discussion section. Besides, I suggest to include more charts instead of so many tables. Figures make data more comprehensive for readers.

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their availability and commitment in evaluating this work, we believe that the suggested corrections will be essential for the quality of the work. The entire article underwent a language review, where corrections for clarity and conciseness were highlighted in the text, and all suggestions have been carefully evaluated and addressed individually in this letter.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript entitled "Cultivating biodiversity to harvest sustainability: vermicomposting and inoculation of microorganisms for soil preservation and resilience" covers important issues that fit into the circular economy and issues related to sustainable development. However, the authors need to improve the material separation and methodology and results

Detailed comments are provided below:

Introduction

Line 63

Please add more references.

2. Materials and Methods

2.2. Vermicompost formulation

Lines 126-130

The qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the waste used in the experiment are missing. It is unacceptable to write in the manuscript that food wastes from the university restaurant and plant waste from campus landscaping have been rendered harmless. Both types of waste are diverse. The initial biomass of waste (their composition) affects the composition of the final compost and vermicompost. In the manuscript, only the name of waste is given, it needs to be characterized more broadly. Table 1 is insufficient, more waste characterization is needed. The authors described chapter 2.1 well.

Lines 133-136

At which point the samples were inoculated with microorganisms?

Lines 139-140

The name Californian earthworm should not be used but only compost, instead of Eisenia foetida it should be used  Eisenia fetida

Lines 138- 142

Please specify. The text shows that the composting process lasted 60 days and the vermicomposting process took 60 days? Did those 120 days involve the vermicompost maturation process? This is missing in the methodology. This is a very important factor as the compost used should be mature? Was this experiment carried out once?

 

Results

I believe that the characteristics of the resulting Vermicomposts (V1, V2, V3) should not only be compared in individual tables. Initial biomass (food wastes and plant wastes) should also be compared. Therefore, waste should be further characterized in terms of biological, chemical and physical properties.

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their availability and commitment in evaluating this work, we believe that the suggested corrections will be essential for the quality of the work. The entire article underwent a language review, where corrections for clarity and conciseness were highlighted in the text, and all suggestions have been carefully evaluated and addressed individually in this letter.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Authors need to change the Materials and Methods section to make the design of the experiment clearer. And also describe in more detail the research methods used.

In my opinion, the Discussion section is too extensive and includes a lot of optional information. It is necessary to shorten this section and focus on the discussion of the results obtained.

Need to make changes to the tables.

The conclusions are very general and do not fully reflect the results obtained.

I have indicated other remarks in the text of the manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their availability and commitment in evaluating this work, we believe that the suggested corrections will be essential for the quality of the work. The entire article underwent a language review, where corrections for clarity and conciseness were highlighted in the text, and all suggestions have been carefully evaluated and addressed individually in this letter.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript deals with the production and analysis of three types of compost, one without inoculum and one with inoculum from the virgin forest soil. The third compost is a commercial vermicompost.

The work is interesting and reports the data of numerous analyzes. The preparation of the inoculum is also very interesting.

It is written in good English and reads well.

In my opinion, however, a fundamental experiment is missing: a plant test. And this affects the value of the work.

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their availability and commitment in evaluating this work, we believe that the suggested corrections will be essential for the quality of the work. The entire article underwent a language review, where corrections for clarity and conciseness were highlighted in the text, and all suggestions have been carefully evaluated and addressed individually in this letter.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Abstract and objective. Include there that vermicomposts were tested in  Origanum vulgare L plants.

Section 2.3.4. DNA sequencing. No sequencing platform is identified, and databases used for fungi and bacteria identification are mentioned. Besides, results from DNA sequencing are number of DNA sequences, not CFU (Table 5), unless further studies not indicated were performed.   

About formatting tables. On one hand, there are still tables where decimal values are separated by colons instead of decimal points and the number of decimal values is inconsistent in tables 2,3,4, 5, 6, 7. In the same tables the use of letters denoting statistical differences is wrong. On the other hand, table 8 is totally ok.

PCA figures. I now see that replicates from 1 to 9 are included but there are still round and triangle points which  looks like mean values? They are not needed anymore and check that mean values were not considered in calculations.

Line 167. Reference number for Passos, 2014 is missing

Line 186. Reference number is missing

Table 7. No necessary up to 7 decimal places

Lines 869-870. English language is missing

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their availability and commitment in evaluating this work, we believe that the suggested corrections will be essential for the quality of the work. The entire article underwent a language review, where corrections for clarity and conciseness were highlighted in the text, and all suggestions have been carefully evaluated and addressed individually in this letter.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors responded to the reviews quite exhaustively. Therefore, the manuscript is much better. However, the composition of food waste is variable, which affects the wider application of the results.

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their availability and commitment in evaluating this work, we believe that the suggested corrections will be essential for the quality of the work. The entire article underwent a language review, where corrections for clarity and conciseness were highlighted in the text, and all suggestions have been carefully evaluated and addressed individually in this letter.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I thankI thank the authors for the work done to correct the article. Many questions were removed, and comments were taken into account.

However, the text is too large. In the last review, I pointed out this and asked to shorten the Discussion section. The number of pages even increased.

There are still many typos and errors in the text that need to be corrected. It is necessary to check the species names of microorganisms and plants in the text and tables, because errors often occur.

The Conclusions have to include:

1. Indicators, the level of which increased after the inoculation of native and commercial microorganisms in the vermicomposting process. Based on the results obtained, it is impossible to speak of a positive effect on all macro- and microelements, phytohormones, amino acids and humic substances.

2. Advantages of local microorganisms, which have been found over the commercial preparation.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their availability and commitment in evaluating this work, we believe that the suggested corrections will be essential for the quality of the work. The entire article underwent a language review, where corrections for clarity and conciseness were highlighted in the text, and all suggestions have been carefully evaluated and addressed individually in this letter.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript has been completely reformulated with the addition of an experiment on plant, fully responding to my comment. I have also noticed substantial additions in responses to other referees, which are very positive.

On line 224 superscript the numbers.

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their availability and commitment in evaluating this work, we believe that the suggested corrections will be essential for the quality of the work. The entire article underwent a language review, where corrections for clarity and conciseness were highlighted in the text, and all suggestions have been carefully evaluated and addressed individually in this letter.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx