Incorporating Multi-Scale, Spectrally Detected Nitrogen Concentrations into Assessing Nitrogen Use Efficiency for Winter Wheat Breeding Populations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

All my comments and concerns were taken into account, and I am satisfied with the answers and modifications made by the authors. Congratulations to the authors for a solid piece of work.

Author Response

Thanks you very much for the comment. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Peron-Danaher et al. use detected hyperspectral nitrogen concentrations to assess nitrogen use efficiency for winter-wheat breeding populations. The scientific topic is interest to Remote Sensing journal. While, I have some serious concerns:

1. Materials and Methods. Soil physical and chemical properties, such as clay, pH value, C and N concentrations, should be given.
2. The information of wheat cultivars and the major growth stages of wheat also should be given.
3. The fertilization schemes of 2017-2018 winter-wheat growing seasons are unclear. For example, are there fertilizer application in the turn-green and jointing stages?
4. Spectral and reference tissue collections. The date of collection in 2017 and 2018 wheat growing season are different. There were more observations in 2017 than in 2018 growing season. Each plot was subdivided into 3 subplots and 2 subplots in 2017 and 2018, respectively. For agricultural repeated experiments, the inconsistent method of 2017 and 2018 years is a defect.
5. Please show the chemometric modeling in manuscript.
6. Line 232, change “Where” into “where”.
7. Discuss the reason of the difference in 2017 modeling and 2017-2018 modeling.

Author Response

Reply to reviewer comments in attached document. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The quality of the manuscript has been greatly improved. Now, the manuscript can be accepted for publication.