Soil Management, Irrigation and Fertilisation Strategies for N2O Emissions Mitigation in Mediterranean Agricultural Systems
, Óscar Veroz-González 2, Emilio J. González-Sánchez 2,3,4, Rafaela Ordóñez-Fernández 1, Manuel Moreno-GarcÃa 1 and Miguel A. Repullo-Ruibérriz de Torres 1,4,*
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an interesting paper on N2O emissions from agriculture. An important factor in our efforts to mitigate climate change.
In my first review I suggested an improvement of the material and methods section. I thought that improvement could be straight forward. The authors responded to some of the comments but in all of them. I repeat some of them and I added some more to improve the paper.
I think it is useful to define how fertilisers were applied (basic and top dressing): Spreading, linear application, through the irrigation system?
Where the sampling chambers were placed? Between the rows, near drippers? How the position could affect measurements?
In the material and methods irrigation water applied was Full dose on crop demand: 100%. What is crop demand? Evapor-transpiration? Please define it.
Please define plot size.
L187 the authors mention that sampling depth was 0-20 and 20-40 cm. But in Table 3 they have different samples up to 60 cm. What is the correct depths? I suppose that they refor to Nitrogen analysis.
L189 The nitrate in the irrigation water was also measured periodically in order to assess all sources that affect the soil nitrate Are there somewhere the data? OK they are later in the paper.
Λ293 I think basic is better than background fertilizer application
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The state of the art in the introduction section is not completely well presented. And it is not clear which should be their own contribute to the knowledge. What did the authors hypothesize?
In the 3.1 section, where is this part from? The label is missing. For example “The first season the values ranged between 80 mgNO3 kg-1 (first stages) and 5 mgNO3 kg-1 (end of irrigation) at 0-20 cm, and 50-5 mgNO3 kg-1 at 20-40 cm depth.” Which table or figure shows this data?
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear,
paper accepted with minor corrections
Best
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an interesting paper with extend literature analysis. The authors evaluated three factors namely soil tillage, type of fertiliser and water application on N2O emissions during corn crop. It is well written and documented.
Some comments that would improve the paper:
I think tillage is not the best description. Non inversion tillage or minimum tillage would give a better picture. In L 247 you mention conventional tillage. Usually this includes ploughing. Please use one term and follow it throughout the paper.
I think that the initial conditions of the field should be presented. I suppose it is conventional tillage with very low OM content usual to Mediterranean soils.
During the experiment what was the treatment of residues? Removed or left in the field?
I think it is useful to define how fertilisers were applied (basic and top dressing): Spreading, linear application, through the irrigation system?
Where the sampling chambers were placed? Between the rows, near drippers? How the position could affect measurements?
How the water demand rate was estimated?
Were the temperatures similar in the three years? Or the third year was less hot? Could this affect the results?
L 176 drippers instead of droppers
L 350 the days since the last irrigation Do the dates of irrigation shown somewhere? I can see the first and the last water application.
L351 the nitrate content in the soil at the moment of extracting gas emissions. How was this measured or estimated?
Reviewer 2 Report
The introduction, materials and methods and discussion part need to be re-written. No doubt the experiment conducted is of interest but the writing need to be improved significantly. The flow of the information is lacking. there are lots of small paragraphs (even of two lines) which need to be combined. The careless writing can be noticed as some of the paragraphs are duplicated in introduction section. So authors need to read the manuscript before submission.
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors conducted three-season plot studies on N2O gas emissions under the influence of tillage, irrigation, and fertilizer types. It is a very interesting result for readers. Although the experimental component and structures are sound, this manuscript requires a significant amount of work to improve the publication.
In the introduction, the authors incorporated great background and information, but many sentences are unclear and require improvement for their flow. The authors described all issues, but it requires the reorganize sentences and reconstruction within the section:
I summarized your contents the following way. The current format is a little less cohesive.
Problems on N2O gas emission
Issues in sustainable agriculture-related with N2O gas emission
Tillage impact on N2O emission: Till, No-till, OC, etc..
N2O emission by fertilizer application: Type of fertilizers on N2O, etc…
Irrigation issues on N2O, etc…
Suggested issues or justification for these studies…
objectives
Page 1, L35: strong ?
Page 2, L52-57: Rewrite sentence.
Page 3, L14-18: Conclusion should be before the objectives
Page 6, L 10-11: What is the reason for doing only 60 min gas sampling? I suggest measuring the emission rate? The two point, 0 min and 60 min collections are not possible to check the slope.
It is supposed to collect gas samples at some intervals, 0 min, 15 min, 30 min, 45 min, 60 min for the emission rate? Or at least 3 points.
Page 10, L51: Have you defined PC2 & PC3 somewhere?.
Page 11, L73-78: suggest to rewrite, hard to follow the meaning?
In all figures, symbols are redundant.
Page 12, L89-91: Write your sentence clearly.
Page 12, L107-115: the meaning is not clear?
Suggest combining both results and discussion.
In the discussion section, the majority of contents are literature reviews, please rewrite contents related to your results.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
