Extracellular Enzyme Activity and Stoichiometry Reveal Nutrient Dynamics during Microbially-Mediated Plant Residue Transformation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Minor revisions are required for the publication of this manuscript entitled “Extracellular enzyme activity and stoichiometry reveal nutrient dynamics during microbially-mediated plant residue transformation.”. This study is interesting but some minor corrections are required for publication.

1.     Use abbreviated form in abstract not short form.

2.     Please improve the introduction section. Include some recent information in introduction section related to the soil enzymes like FDA, alkaline phosphatase etc. Authors may consider these works: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-020-02448-2, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-022-05351-2, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-020-02329-8

3.     Line 104 material and methods not Material and Methods. Please correct.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

My comments are about the keywords: please replace “soil microbial biomass carbon” with “soil microbial biomass” alone. Line 42: the differences between ex vivo and in vivo is unclear, please add more details. Line 96: replace “hypothesizes” with “hypothesis” and also, why limit microbial metabolism? Lines 104-110: this is part of the template, please delete it. Line 143: Did you use Walkley-Black or Springer-Klee method for SOC determination? Statistical analyses: How many samples did you collect? How many field and lab replicates did you perform the analysis on? Please report this information.

Some relevant references should be added as follow: 10.3390/f9120766, 10.1007/s11104-022-05676-y, 10.3390/f7080181, 10.1007/s10533-009-9404-y.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx