Evaluation of Biochar and Compost Mixes as Substitutes to a Commercial Propagation Mix
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Evaluation of Biochar and Compost Mixes as Substitutes to a Commercial Propagation Mix
I write you in regards to manuscript # applsci-615076 entitled "Evaluation of Biochar and Compost Mixes as Substitutes to a Commercial Propagation Mix" which you submitted to the applied sciences.
Authors need to follow the following instructions to improve this manuscript
Page 3, Line 99-100: Check these 3 sentences. Need to clarify specifically. Add information on moisture content. Page 4, Line 171: Where is the discussion? Page 9, Line 60: References should check carefully.
I recommend to improve the manuscript and resubmit.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments Point 1: Page 3, Line 104-105: Check these 3 sentences. Need to clarify specifically. Add information of moisture content. Response 1: I have rewritten these 3 sentences to clarify specifically. Because the moisture content of the biochar, vermicompost and chicken manure compost could be affected by the evaporation and is inconsistent over the time, the information of the container capacity, which is the maximum percent volume a substrate can hold water, has been added to Line 112-113. And other physical properties (total porosity, air space and bulk density) and the composition of biochar have been added to improve the Materials and Methods part. Point 2: Page 5, Line 193: Where is discussion? Response 2: I missed to type “Discussion” to the title. The title should be “Results and Discussion”. And for this part, all the results were presented and also discussed. Point 3: Page 9, Line 60: References should check carefully. Response 3: Although I am not sure where is the line 60 in page 9, I have carefully and significantly checked all the references.Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
In this work, authors showed the efficiency of biochar and mixture for plant propagation. Some revisions are required to be published.
I recommend to show analyzed data for the biochar composition, because biochar is a complex mixture. In figure 1(a), 2(a), and 3(a), you have to show whole bar for tomato, cowpea, corn, etc. And could you explain the meaning of emergence percentage over 100%?Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Point 1: I recommend to show analysed data for the biochar composition, because biochar is a complex mixture.
Response 1: The data for the biochar nutrient analysis or biochar composition was added and shown in Table 1(Line 115).
Point 2:In figure 1(a), 2(a), and 3(a), you have to show whole bar for tomato, cowpea, corn, etc.
Response 2:The whole bar for the emergence percentage (EP) of tomato, cowpea, corn, etc in figure 1(a), 2(a), and 3(a) has already been shown. The maximum number for the EP is 100%. In figure 1(a), the EP of cowpea seeds germinated in all the replications in the control and mixes of 80% biochar and 20% vermicompost (8BC:2VC) was 100%, so the standard error was 0. Similarly, the EP of corn seeds in the control in figure 1(a) was also 100%±0. I have added “▾” to the figure 1(a), 2(a) and 3(a), and means indicated by “▾” were 100%±0.
Point 3:And could you explain the meaning of emergence percentage over 100%?
Response 3:There was no emergence percentage over 100%. The maximum number for the emergence percentage was 100%. However, the emergence index could be over 100% because of the way of calculation. The emergence index reflects the germination speed. The larger the emergence index is, the faster the seeds germinate.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Authors addressed a manuscript according to reviewer's comments.
