A Nematode Community-Based Integrated Productivity Efficiency (IPE) Model That Identifies Sustainable Soil Health Outcomes: A Case of Compost Application in Carrot Production
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript entitled “A nematode community-based integrated productivity efficiency (IPE) Model that Identifies Sustainable Soil Health Outcomes: A Case of Compost Application in Carrot Production” utilizes a new modeling technique to fully address soil health outcomes. The premise of the paper is justifiable and unique as this paper proposes a new way to weight nematode cp groups regardless of feeding type and relate it to soil health indicators. This manuscript has the potential to contribute substantial new information to the field of integrating nematology into the soil health framework. However, substantial revisions are necessary and required of this manuscript. Below are detailed summaries of each portion of the paper and line by line edits. Major revisions needed include a rewrite of the abstract to make it more palatable for readers unfamiliar with topic, a more streamlined introduction where key terms are defined, restructuring of figures as detailed below, a major restructuring of the discussion, and a rewrite of the conclusion so that it more effectively summarizes the main points of the paper. Lastly, there were several writing and grammatical errors in this manuscript, which would suggest that strong copy editing is warranted.
Abstract: The abstract lacks a statement of the objectives or aims, there should be some introduction of the agricultural management systems that IPE is conducted on. The abstract was verbose and should be streamlined to address the objectives of the paper.
Line 19: Don’t start sentence with acronyms
Line 21: soil organisms instead of organisms
Line 21: “measured agronomic parameter” not “measured parameter:
Line 23: confusing what is meant by as a percent of control, I would suggest rephrasing
Line 27: be specific how many seasons?
Line 27: rephrase “Untreated and urea treatments served as experimental control.”
Line 28: “was difficult to make sense of “
Line 29: “AC and 2X rate of PC treatments”
Introduction: The introduction is lengthy and verbose and can be condensed throughout to streamline the objective. In addition there are numerous sentence structure errors throughout the introduction. Steady- state conditions are never defined and need to be early in the introduction.
Line 38-77: can be condensed and is very verbose, please streamline the integration platform need and integrated efficiency assessment in agricultural systems using nematodes.
Line 38: “The application of soil nutrient amendments are..”
Line 41: delete the
Line 41-45: Reword watch for changing tenses “ suppressing” should be “suppression of pests and disease, increased beneficial nematodes” reads better than combining them in the same statement.
Line 45: Delete space before “9”
Line 45: comma after pH
Line 46-49: Reword sentence structure is confusing
Line 49: please define or elaborate on steady-state conditions
Line 50: “Sustainable soil health outcomes are defined as i)”
Line 58: please define integration platform before using it in line 55 not after
Line 61: First instead of frits
Line 64: indicators of what
Line 65: preferences instead of behaviors
Line 64-68: please break this sentence up into two
Line 73-77: Is redundant please condense into one sentence
Line 79: stronger topic sentence needed here
Line 89-91: Stating this earlier in the paragraph may help streamline the point
Line 129: comma after yield
Line 145: I would suggest adding hypotheses
Line 148-149: Is this true? Don’t nematode indices do this? Please make this statement more clear.
Line 157-159: What is the basis for this comparison please provide why you did this or remove this objective. To me treatment differences Vs. ecosystem functioning are two different things, where the model may use treatment differences. But it is implied that these two are different. Maybe incorporate language from line 161-162
Line 159-161: Delete. Sentence is not necessary. Also confusing because you are not using an FUE model but are using and IPE model so why is an FUE model mentioned.
Line 161-162: This should be incorporated earlier in the paragraph
Methods: Elaboration on some of the methods is needed. Section 2.5 can be condensed and should be in the statistical methods. See line edits below. Statistical software should be included in the statistical analysis.
Line 171:”herbivore suppression, soil properties, yield, quality of a processing carrot cv. ‘Cupar’. This study was conducted during the 2012, 2013, and 2014 growing seasons.
Line 174: Please don’t start sentences with an acronym
Line 174: carbon “(C) and nitrogen (N) ratio”, not defined before
Line 181: “ha respectively”
Line 193: Cannot use respectively you have two day lengths and three years, please specify
Line 203: what was the diameter of the sample cone?
Line 205: You used 100 cc for nematode extraction alone, how did you use this also for ph and %OM. Please edit number.
Line 209: Please elaborate on the procedures used as many readers are not familiar with these practices and there are a variety of methods used to extract nematodes.
Line 208: Please include in these methods weather nematodes were fixed and what they were fixed in, and how many nematodes were identified per sample.
Line 226: How can trophic groups be within another trophic group?
Line 227-Line 229: Please be more specific what you mention soil function, one could say that nematode indices do this, do you mean other soil health indicators?
Line 216-233: Very verbose. Can be condensed and most is not needed as this is a repeat of what was stated in the introduction.
Line 235: mention “and propose a new weighting for c-p 1 in this study” In lines 256 not 235.
Line 260: There needs to be a larger justification for why cp-1 should be calculated as n=0.
Line 270-283: Take the review style out of this paragraph and be direct. For example change line 278 to “High c-p 1 to c-p 5 groups indicate enriched and healthy systems”
Line 288: Delete ecosystem service
Line 288: Why are these just now being referred to as soil health indicators where they were referred to as ecosystem services in the introduction, please pick one term and be consistent with it. Soil health indicator may be more preferrable as ecosystem service is the outcome of all soil health indicators functioning together.
Line 302: why is soil health underlined
Line 304: delete space after health
Line 306: word missing after Quadrant D
Line 329: analysis of variance (ANOVA)
Line 323: at what significance value?
Line 331: Why is and FUE mentioned isn’t a IPE model the only one used?
Line 332-334: Is this needed they look at two different ideas, and can be implied.
Line 324-326: Make into list format add commas. Change to “trophic group level abundance”
Line 215: This should be a subsection in the statistical analysis and remove lines 326-329 as it is redundant
Results: Figures need substantial revision in terms of readability. See line edits for detailed revisions needed.
Line 341: This section is not necessary, please refer to tables and figures in the text when explaining a result.
Line 349: significantly high compared to what?
Line 350,351,357, 359,375: Don’t begin sentence with acronyms
Line 352: Delete “Except in 2012”
Line 360-363: This should be in the methods not results.
Line 378: increased nematode what? Trophic abundance?
Line 378. Starting at “with” should be a new sentence
Line 379: “ and was”
Figures 3,4,5,6: The numbers are hard to read I would suggest using colors instead to indicate fertilizer treatment. Also it could be useful to overlay text of what each quadrant represents within each quadrant. Quadrant letters should be on the figure as well.
Line 419-420: watch tense increased instead of increasing same as “improving”. “over time” instead of “with time”. Correct in line 440 as well.
Discussion: It is good practice to remind the reader of the objectives this paper aimed to answer. Additionally, much of the discussion seems to be reiteration of the first section. Use the objectives to frame your discussion. To me I would picture something of a discussion of 1) Assessment of WAFG in the IPE model 2) Discussion of findings of the measurement of soil health indicators and WAFG 3) Comparison between means separation and IPE model 3) Potential of IPE platform. Additionally, there needs to be more literature brought into the discussion.
Line 464: Integrate nematodes with AP’s? Be specific here.
Line 473: Good indicators of what?
Line 484: starting at “and..” this phrase seems out of place
Line 485: This should be a separate sentence
Line 487-490: can be condensed into one sentence
Line 496: starting at to this sentence needs rephrasing
Line 497-500: this point is made multiple times throughout the discussion and seems redundant please eliminate redundancy (eg line 490)
Line 501-503: This is a valid point that is not mentioned in the introduction the explanation of this in the introduction would justify your third objective see comments above.
Line 550: Delete extra spaces
Line 551: delete extra spaced and dash after “disciplinary”
Line 509-552: There needs to be more literature brought into this part of the discussion.
Line 554-566, 579: Citations should be in brackets
Line 559: carbon dioxide instead of CO2
Line 564: C instead of carbon
Line 565: N instead of nitrogen
Line 554-582: A lot of this section is redundant, verbose, and unnecessary. I urge the author to think about the point they are trying to make, it was very hard to discern the point of this section.
Conclusion: Revise the conclusion to address how this study met your objectives.
Author Response
See attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
In general, the manuscript contains a well researched topic. However, the written communication makes it very difficult to accurately follow the research presented. Much of the language is not appropriate for scientific publication and reads as though it is a transcript from a talk with friends. For example, line 30 'Besides'. This is not appropriate. There are also many instances where %OM is used and not defined. Giving this abbreviation for percent soil organic, organic what? What does the 'M' stand for? You cannot allow the reader to make their own assumption. It's very risks and can lead to misunderstanding of your work. Furthermore, percentage soil organic matter is typically written as 'SOM' without any percentage sign as the units for this quantification are already known to be percentages.
The abstract does not clearly define or outline the study as a whole and does not present a concluding remark. At a first glance, it is difficult to know wheat the outcomes of your study were.
The text size of all figures should be the same. Some figures have text smaller than others.
Throughout the manuscript, lists of quantities and parameters are written as '... and ... and ... and ... and'. This not the correct way to structure a list, as well as making it difficult to follow in the text.
The discussion has a different referencing format than other sections of the manuscript. You should use the format provided by the journal.
Why have you used 'soil health' rather than soil quality?
I'm unsure as to whether the conclusions are adequately supported as there is a lot of grammar and language errors that hinder the understanding of the text. The research is interesting and has merit, however, the communication of the work needs great attention.
Author Response
See attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Introduction and discussion needs to be shortened, redundancies removed and restructured for readability and flow. Both read a lot like a review and are not appropriate for a research paper. Writing, syntax and style should be improved throughout. Details on the annotated PDF.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
See attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for your detailed comments. Having read through your responses and manuscript, I can see that it is much improved, with clearer explanations and a greater degree of detail.
