Irrigation Management Scale and Water Application Method to Improve Yield and Water Productivity of Field-Grown Strawberries
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Scientific plant-names need to be set "italic"
Although widely used - "variety" is not correct. The term "cultivar" or "cultivated variety" should/must be used.
The "Discussion" is more likely a "Conclusion". That can be extended and might go into depth more.
From a plant-physiologist's point of view - it seems puzzling that irrigation management did not affect plant traits and yield and fruit-(quality)-traits significantly. From a pomolgist's point of view - strawberries do behave different to other fruit-crops. In which year of the production-site did you conduct your research? That can have an effect on the results.
I am missing a clear description of amount and occurrence of natural precipitation. And to which share irrigation contributed to the soil-water-content.
Thanks for this interesting and nice article!
Author Response
Scientific plant-names need to be set "italic" -> Corrected in the text, some formatting was lost when the original text was pasted in the template
Although widely used - "variety" is not correct. The term "cultivar" or "cultivated variety" should/must be used. -> We agree, it was a poor translation from common French phrasing, corrected in the text.
The "Discussion" is more likely a "Conclusion". That can be extended and might go into depth more.
Agreed, the section was labeled accordingly. Additional remarks about spatial variability and calculation of irrigation thresholds were added and new research posibilities listed. Still, the conclusion was kept relatively short as it is the authors opinion that the reader can refer to the results section for a more detailled analysis.
From a plant-physiologist's point of view - it seems puzzling that irrigation management did not affect plant traits and yield and fruit-(quality)-traits significantly. From a pomolgist's point of view - strawberries do behave different to other fruit-crops. In which year of the production-site did you conduct your research? That can have an effect on the results
As this study was focused on management scale and water application method, the average SWP was maintained near the optimal range (-8 to -13 kPa) derived from previous work. Hence, no severe hydric stress was observed for extended periods. Most studies reporting plant and fruit trais effects had treatments in the -30 to -50 kPa range. Also, crown diameter and leaf area measurements were performed early in the season and stopped for practical reasons when maximal leaf coverage was achieved. At this time the evaporative demand is low and the effects of irrigation on plant growth is limited. Strawberries do behave different than other crop, but we repeatedly observed that fruit set seems to be the first process affected be water availability (Létourneau et al. 2015). As a soil physicist, I could not explain in detail the physiological processes involved.
The year was added to the material and methods section, line 94
I am missing a clear description of amount and occurrence of natural precipitation. And to which share irrigation contributed to the soil-water-content.
This info was added in the results section, lines 366-367
Thanks for this interesting and nice article!
Thanks for this constructive review
Reviewer 2 Report
Reviewer’s comments
This is a nice article, focused on the Agronomy of an irrigated crop, including the engineering aspects of the irrigation network, the hydraulics of the irrigation process, and the relationships between irrigation and the crop. The “Introduction” with presentation of the objectives are clear, the “Materials and Methods” section enough, and the Results enough clearly presented and discussed. A specific section “Discussion” is added, but already not relevant, could perhaps be titled “Conclusions”. Tables and figures with data are adequate.
Author Response
Thank you for your positive review
I agree that the «Discussion» section should be labeled «Conclusion». Discussion was used as it was the recommended term in the template but in fact the we discussed the results in the «Results» section.
Minor terminology modifications were made (variety replaced by cultivar) and a small element was added to the conclusion.
Sincerely,
Guillaume Létourneau
