Effects of the Continuous Cropping and Soilborne Diseases of Panax Ginseng C. A. Meyer on Rhizosphere Soil Physicochemical Properties, Enzyme Activities, and Microbial Communities
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript is dealint with dynabmica of soilborne microbiome in plantation of the ginseng under various tretment in comparison with control soil. This paper would be interesting fo broad audience and represents classical example of soil chemical and microbiological study. At the same time, I would privide few reccomendations and suggestions:
1. Soil and initial control soil should be described in details - morphology, soil horizons name, topographical location, mineralogical and chemical composition, soil color according Munsell, and, finaly, soil taxonomy, this will increase number of readers and extent knowledge about soil diversty.
2. Introduction - at the end of this chapter I reccomend to fromulate precisely aims and objectives of study, I reccomend also to formulate limitations of the research.
3. I reccomend to provide insert map of the study plots, as well as pictures of soils and both, native and vegetated plans communities.
4. minor remarks:
all figures are low quality and hard-to-read line 144. Which database did you use for ITS sequences? line 148. No bioprojects with these IDs were found in the NCBI database line 253. Did you really identify only Fungi in the ITS data? Usually you can find Metazoa and classified organisms from other kingdoms. line 286. Please add confirmation how one RA is significantly higher than another (metric, p-value) line 328. It would be helpful to add a significant difference to the plot on the figure 4 line 397. Why did you apply RDA on the phylum level? I general, this paper is organized as good standart microbiological paper.
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you again for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Effects of the Continuous Cropping and Soilborne Diseases of Panax ginseng C. A. Meyer on Rhizosphere Soil Physicochemical Properties, Enzyme Activities, and Microbial Communities” (No: agronomy-2137003). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have revised the manuscript, according to the comments and suggestions of reviewers and editor, and responded, point by point to, the comments as listed below. The revised contents are highlight the changes by using the track changes mode in MS Word in the revised manuscript. We believe that the scientific rigor and the presentation are greatly improved in this revised manuscript.
I would like to re-submit this revised manuscript to Agronomy, and hope it is acceptable for publication in the journal.
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours sincerely,
Fuhui Chen
E-mail: chenfuhui9709@163.com (Fuhui Chen)
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript ,, Effects of the Continuous Cropping and Soilborne Diseases of Panax ginseng C. A. Meyer on Rhizosphere Soil Physicochemical Properties, Enzyme Activities, and Microbial Communities’’ is consistent with the scope of the journal Agronomy. The authors studied the physicochemical properties, enzyme activity, and microbial communities in the soil under ginseng cultivation, and 'soil-borne diseases'. The term "soilborne disease" is incomprehensible and should be carefully explained by the Authors. Moreover, the manuscript was prepared in a manner typical for scientific works. Appropriate division into chapters was used. The authors used the correct analytical and statistical methods. The results are presented in the form of tables and graphs. However, the readability of the graphs is unacceptable and needs improvement. Also, the aim of the research or the research hypothesis should be better presented. The cited literature is correct. The work is written correctly, the results are well described. I recommend the manuscript for publication in this journal, but with corrections. Detailed comments are below.
Introduction
Line 14, 16, 23, 25, 26, 46, 57, 62… 299, 345 …. - the authors talk about ,,soilborne diseases’’ throughout the paper. I am asking the Authors to explain exactly in the text what they mean by this statement, because it is not clear.
in addition, what diseases the authors are referring to should also be clearly explained
Line 43-46 – since it has already been studied, what is the innovative aspect of this research? Explain.
Line 56-57 - what symptoms? - specify. Are they pathogens or physiological changes? Were pathogens found in the analysis? If so, which ones ?
Line 56-64 – I propose to clearly present the hypothesis and then refer to it in the conclusions.
Materials and Methods
Line 73 - what is an 18 mesh sieve?
Line 77 and line 79 - explain exactly what you mean by "healthy" and "severely diseased" soil.
Line 84, 86, 88,90, 92, 95, 97, 99 - please include standards in References with their exact title and other information to find them.
Results
Line 191 - I think it should be: ,, Soil physicochemical and chemical…..’’
Line 192, 208, 231 - replace * with a statement, e.g abbreviations, explanations, legend
Line 192-198, 208-215, 231-236 – use hyphen to explain abbreviations: TN — total nitrogen; TP — total phosphorus; …..
Figure 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ,7, 8, 9 – all figures are illegible!!! Please increase their size, resolution and, above all, font.
Line 238 – 239 - Where do these results come from?
Figure 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ,7, 8, 9- use hyphen to explain abbreviations: CH —…..; CD —…., CK — …….
Line 252 -259 - no reference to figure or table
Line 397-439 figure 8,9 – why the other study parameters were not included in this analysis: TP, TK, AP, AK, OM, Ph, S-UE, S-CAT, S-CL, S-SC?
Discussion
Line 474-475 – this is common knowledge, therefore we cannot treat it as a discovery. I suggest changing that sentence.
Line 493-494 – what diseases, signs, symptoms are you referring to?
Line 549 - I think it should be Ratledge and Wynn
Line 577 - explain why these factors were chosen
Conclusions
I propose to reword the conclusions, they should be more specific and relate to the purpose of the research presented in the introduction. In the Authors' debt (line 58-60) : ,, To 58 explore the causes of soilborne diseases of ginseng, we measured the soil physicochemical 59 properties, enzyme activities and soil microbial community using woodland soil without 60 ginseng planting as a control’’, so what were the reasons? in addition, what diseases the authors are referring to should also be clearly explained
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you again for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Effects of the Continuous Cropping and Soilborne Diseases of Panax ginseng C. A. Meyer on Rhizosphere Soil Physicochemical Properties, Enzyme Activities, and Microbial Communities” (No: agronomy-2137003). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have revised the manuscript, according to the comments and suggestions of reviewers and editor, and responded, point by point to, the comments as listed below. The revised contents are highlight the changes by using the track changes mode in MS Word in the revised manuscript. We believe that the scientific rigor and the presentation are greatly improved in this revised manuscript.
I would like to re-submit this revised manuscript to Agronomy, and hope it is acceptable for publication in the journal.
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours sincerely,
Fuhui Chen
E-mail: chenfuhui9709@163.com (Fuhui Chen)
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments for author File: Comments.docx
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you again for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Effects of the Continuous Cropping and Soilborne Diseases of Panax ginseng C. A. Meyer on Rhizosphere Soil Physicochemical Properties, Enzyme Activities, and Microbial Communities” (No: agronomy-2137003). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have revised the manuscript, according to the comments and suggestions of reviewers and editor, and responded, point by point to, the comments as listed below. The revised contents are highlight the changes by using the track changes mode in MS Word in the revised manuscript. We believe that the scientific rigor and the presentation are greatly improved in this revised manuscript.
I would like to re-submit this revised manuscript to Agronomy, and hope it is acceptable for publication in the journal.
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours sincerely,
Fuhui Chen
E-mail: chenfuhui9709@163.com (Fuhui Chen)
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript has been improved, and it is recommended to check the small details again and carefully revise it according to the first review
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
This manuscript mainly studied the effects of continuous cropping and soil borne diseases on soil properties and soil microbial diversity and structure of Panax gingseng C. A. Meyer. In this manuscript, continuous cropping and pathogens were separated and analyzed, but the accumulation of pathogens and the occurrence degree of continuous cropping obstacles were inseparable, so it was not appropriate to completely separate them; Moreover, the description of the three different treatments in the manuscript was unclear, which did not conform to the principle of single variable. It was more reasonable to adopt two factor analysis.
We thank the reviewer for the suggestions，basis on the last revision, we added specific descriptions of three samples.
Point 1: The form of units in the table should be consistent;
Response 1: We are very grateful to the reviewer for pointing out this shortcoming. In the new manuscript, we have adjusted the form of units in the tables.
Point 2: The figure resolution was low, and the overall was small and unclear, so it was recommended to readjust the combination;
Response 2: We are very grateful to the reviewer for pointing out this shortcoming. In the new manuscript, we have improved the resolution of the figures.
Point 3: It is recommended to further excavate relevant data of high-throughput sequencing, conduct unified analysis on bacterial community structure and fungal community structure, and conduct combined analysis on figures of relevant bacterial and fungal results
Response 3: We are very grateful to the reviewer for the suggestion. We have added the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) of effect size (LEfSe) to determine the taxa, which most likely explains the differences between three soil samples. As for other conduct unified analysis on bacterial community structure and fungal community structure, that is what we will do in depth in the next step. But at present, due to the length and time of the article, this part of the research content has not been carried out yet.
Point 4: There were many discussions irrelevant to the results in this manuscript, so it was recommended to delete them;
Response 4: We think this is a good suggestion, and we have streamlined the discussion part of the manuscript again.
Point 5: The conclusion was too long, and it is recommended to delete
Response 5: We think this is a good suggestion, so we further deleted the redundant part in the conclusion.
Point 6: Most of the summaries were qualitative descriptions of the abstract. It is recommended to add specific and convincing data.
Response 6: We very much agree with the reviewer's suggestion, and we have added more convincing data in the new manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
