Spatiotemporal Distribution of Water and Nitrogen in Border Irrigation and Its Relationship with Root Absorption Properties
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Manuscript is interesting and well compiled, will it be possible to provide water mass balance for various treatments or conceptualize the amount was water for irrigation/precipitation, how much is retained; percolated to groundwater and losses in the form of evaporation etc.
Author Response
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Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
- The content of the article does not match the special issue of Sprinkler irrigation and saving water.
- using any of soil moisture sensors a calibration must be done first or use equations from other studies in the same area.
- Materials and methods section is on data analysis need to be improved. The spatial distribution was not described well and needs more work on the model of kriging and semi-verigrams, using surfer software is not enough to produce maps such as (figures 2,3,5, and 7).
- check line 77
- Initial of the references in the text should be removed such as lines 95, 98, 99, 100 ....etc.
- What is the taken message of the research proposed on saving water????
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
The article titled “Spatiotemporal distribution of water and nitrogen in border irrigation and its relationship with root absorption properties” concerns a interesting field research and fits sufficiently within the journal scope. It contains information that is worthy of publication. However, it have some inaccuracies that need to be corrected. Please, see attached file.
The manuscript is divide into clearly defined sections and contains all required chapters (Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Analysis, Discussion, and Conclusions) as well as Keywords. All figures and tables are necessary. Title is enough correct. Abstract is concise. It defines the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. It needs only a few correction (see attached file. Introduction provide an adequate background for the objectives of the work and is interesting literature survey. The purpose of the research has been clearly formulated. However, chapter "Material and Methods" is incorrect. Especially subchapter “2.3. Measurements” should be completed. This subchapter is not consistent with the description of the results. According to me, there are missing:
- the formula for the calculation soil volume moisture content,
- the mention of determining root length diversity (RLD), roots diameter, and the total root length per 1liter of the soil (or other volume),
- ammonia nitrogen was also determinated, but is not mention,
- What does Dx(10) mean? Dx(50) and Dx(90), too.
- What soil particles were determined? Silt, clay and sand? Maybe particles in a different size range.
In my opinion, the word “line” using to description of the tree row should be change to “rows” throughout the manuscript, as well as the term “between trees” should be change to "between trees within the row". “The soil moisture content between lines was on average 5% higher than the soil moisture content between trees” - values 5% is in the range of the statistical error. According to me this changes are not statistically significant. Figures are not correctly cited in the text: Figure 1a [bolding fonts, line 130] or Figure 1b [line 140] or Fig. 7, Fig. 8 [line 254, 289]. Comments to the results description are in the attached file.
I recommend a major revision.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Revised manuscript looks better but authors have not answered the queries raised as
will it be possible to provide water mass balance for various treatments or conceptualize the amount was water for irrigation/precipitation, how much is retained; percolated to groundwater and losses in the form of evaporation etc.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
Figure 8 and its title are incomprehensible to me. Please, make more clearly understandable.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
