Smart-Hydroponic-Based Framework for Saffron Cultivation: A Precision Smart Agriculture Perspective

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The idea of the authors are known and well appreciated.

The detailed review and research are also recognized and development of a Smart Hydroponic System for Saffron Cultivation.

However, this manuscript needs major revision for improvement, some of these are highlighted below.

At first, the Abstract has lots of unnecessary stories. Concrete outcomes and/or findings were less talked about. There are some minor errors in the abstract, please, take note.

In Figure 1, the Saffron Production; was it World production or Indian production, please, specify.

It is good to show detailed research about the topic, however, please, avoid unnecessary stories, which are not relevant to this work or that are already well known in the field of study.

In the methodology, you wrote " This section may be divided by subheadings. It should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation, as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn." This statement seems to be a mistake. Please, take notes and make adequate corrections.

Because of the longevity of the review, you could not focus on the developed Smart Hydroponic System, which is the major contribution of this manuscript, please, further work on it will be great and of interest.

Some of your figures were stretched and not clear, e.g. Figures 7 and 12.

Several typographical errors and mistakes, which were observed (e.g. Figure 5 "and.Deep"), please, take note of them.

From chapter four, it could be noticed that your pH changed to Ph, this was the same in Figure 11. Does it mean something else or it's a mistake?

Author Response

All the necessary changes suggested by the reviewer has been incorporated in the manuscript and the response sheet is also attached herewith.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review Comments

1. My first concern is that the authors need to understand that Internet of Things (IoT) is not used for the cultivation of Saffon. Rather, it is used to enable or monitor the smart farm environment. In fact, the authors confirmed this in lines 244-257, Figure 11 and reference [59].
2. The paper require extensive English corrections since authors may not be native English speakers. There are several errors.
3. Line 35: Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
4. Line 42: Available data shows that the economy of nations ….
5. Line 52: Paper [10] is not a dependable work to support the claim. I suggest the authors delete the [10] and seek for a properly written article.
6. Line 52: Internet of Things (IoT)
7. Line 58: Agriculture has also benefited …. Delete “been”
8. Line 63: Nutrient Film Technique (NFT)
9. Line 80: The world wide.. delete “wise”
10. Line 85: Fig 2 [19] (space needed)
11. Line 94: Section 3 (space needed)
12. Line 100: The Y-axis (vertical axis) is Production in % Metric Tonnes
13. Line 108: …. Can be used in the development
14. Line 111: Fig 5 [33, 34, 35] (space needed)
15. Line 137 and 145: IoT-Based
16. Lines 215-216 moved to line 214
17. Line 226-227: The paper also provided a systematic
18. Line 231: The paper gave an in-depth
19. Line 258: delete “Internet of things”. Just write IoT
20. Line 258-264: If I am permitted, I will suggest a complete removal because I can not rely on the works on [10] and its relevance.
21. Line 275-276: However, the author did not describe …
22. Line 282: Though the crop yield increased, the system incurred high cost. It was also not implemented using IoT to give better results. Moreover, the authors stated that flowering did not occur in all the plants.
23. Line 306: Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)
24. Line 313: delete wireless sensor network as it is already in line 306. Simply use “WSN”
25. Line 320: delete nutrient film technique as it is already in line 63. Simply use NFT
26. Line 391-392: delete the two lines. Simply start from “In this section…
27. Line 448: delete nutrient film technique as it is already in line 63. Simply use NFT
28. Line 449: I am worried that authors suddenly jumped to the conclusion without any performance evaluation of the proposed hydroponic system. Is this paper just limited to literature review? If yes, why the proposed Fig 11 and Fig 12?
29. Line 500-504: As raised in line 449, it is not possible for authors to claim what was not in the paper. Lines 500-504 can not be in this paper unless authors provide Performance evaluation of the proposed system. I suggest Section 6: Performance evaluation of the Proposed system. Then section 7: Conclusion
30. Reference: ensure it agrees with MDPI template

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The authors have done all the changes suggested by the reviewer and the response sheet is also attached herewith.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is well written and addresses the objective of the study. the authors may need to read through the manuscript again to correct a few typographical error.

In line 75: write J&K in full, you can abbreviate it subsequently. There are other acronyms that are not defined. 

Check the list of references for consistency of style.

 

Author Response

The authors have done all the suggested changes and the response sheet is also attached herewith.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors consider the problem of smart agriculture for Saffron cultivation in India. This paper is a survey of several papers related to that topic. The actual version of the paper should be improved before being acceptable for publication. Specific comments are given in the following.

1. The authors should check again the provided information and the selected references to eliminate all contradiction and confusing information; for example, in the 50^th line they mentioned that the production of Iran I sup to 76% of world saffron production, however this ratio becomes 90% in the 80^th line!
2. In fig 1: is the production is 2020 equal zero!!
3. Some figure are references should be updated; some figures were extracted from previous published papers; did the authors request any authorization for these figures?
4. Similar comment for all other figures.
5. In line 81: they suggest that the “greater the export, more the economy can be benefited” I think that such statement is not accurate in many cases; let us for example consider the case where the production is larger than the demand then the prices will be dropped and the local economy will be negatively impacted.
6. Some abbreviations are not given.
7. What is your definition for passive hydroponics shown in figure 3?
8. Many paragraphs, statements or information are confusing or imprecise; For example, in paragraph 265-270, why the system should be improved? how can it be improved? Etc
9. Lines 297-299 “… improving various parameters …”, what are these parameters? What can they be improved? What will be the impact of such changing? What can we say about the feasibility, the price etc.
10. In line 303, the authors introduce the term of “renewable energy” is renewable energy an essential part of your study? Isn’t it out of the scope of your study? Or it may be an extension? Why this index hasn’t been considered in the previous cited studies.
11. In line 315: Why the performance of the previous studies was not discussed or analyzed?
12. In table 3, the author mention “complexity for use by farmer” what do you mean by this statement? Is it related to the used technology of the price as it was mentioned in line 330.
13. The advantages and drawbacks presented in the tables are heterogenous that make the comparison among the considered studies a tough task for the reader. The authors are encouraged to use the same advantages and drawbacks to compare the selected studies.
14. In table 3; what do you mean by “parameters are not clear”; or “No practical implementation” or “lacks real time implementation”?
15. Lines 364-366: Why this system suffer from this single point? What was the solution proposed by the original authors to avoid this point or at least to reduce its impact of their system?
16. There are several format problems and typos in figure 5.
17. Some parts of the manuscript are redundant ad authors are encouraged to reduce them.
18. Why do you any select 100 articles in your SLR?
19. Figure 7 is not clear, what do you mean by Review article?
20. What is the ordinate axe and its unit?
21. All figure and tables should be well explained in the text of the manuscript.
22. In line 443, are the analyzed solutions suitable for the local economy and working standards?
23. The system shown in figure 11: did you implement it? if yes what are the performance of your system? Did you compare your results to other methods?
24. In line 476, the authors claim the a “200Ah” battery will be enough to run the system for hours! That will definitely depend on the size of the system, the used devices and sensors, the environment parameters, etc!
25. Figure 12 is in bad resolution and some words are illegible
26. The authors mention in line 491 the ESP8266 Wifi module, but they didn’t describe this module; they didn’t give its characteristics and they didn’t justify their choice?
27. In line 502: they mention the “water energy”, do you mean wind energy as shown in Figure 11?
28. Many details are missing in several references.
29. There are few typos in the manuscript.
30. The authors of this manuscript should emphasize their contributions.

Author Response

The author has done all the suggested changes and the response sheet is attached herewith.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Number one: The reference [10] is still not provided in detail. The authors should give complete reference information about [10].

Number two: While trying to respond to previous corrections, the authors made new errors about spacing. See

Line 96: Provide space before section 3

Line 97: Provide space before section 4

Lines 83-88 had similar space errors such as "worldwide", "shownin", "India[19]"

Line 110: give space after fig 3[33..]

Authors should also check the reference template of MDPI and ensure full compliance. 

 

Author Response

All the suggested changes are implemented. Kindly refer the detailed response sheet attached herewith.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The 2nd version of the manuscript is better than the previous one. However, there are still many typos in the paper.

Author Response

All the changes suggested by the reviewers are implemented. A detailed review response sheet is attached herewith. Kindly refer the same.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf