Design and Testing of Reverse-Rotating Soil-Taking-Type Hole-Forming Device of Pot Seedling Transplanting Machine for Rapeseed
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General
Required improvement efforts are the correct usage of English grammar and punctuations.
Abstract
Try to split lines from 11 to 17 into 3 or 4 sentences for easy understanding of the background, problem statement and purpose of the study separately
Many grammatical mistakes are found in abstract like
Line 19 removes the word “then” also used sentences, it was found from the test results instead of indicated.
Line 20 puts a comma after moved forward, the forward speed
Line 26, I think verticality is not suitable word. Kindly check it
Key words
Too general, must be few specific words
Introduction
The introduction is well documented and adequately explains the problem that exists in the management of cluster grape. It discusses the various studies that have been done in this area. The synthesis must be clearer and more organized, correlated with the aim and objective. See also, adequation with the title
Reference for line 60?
Materials and Methods
Try to add a paragraph at the start of materials and methods that explain stepwise what you will discuss in this chapter
Provide more information about design and mass properties of the designed device
In line 113 hm2 stands for?
Please review the text are typos and double-spaced?
I do not understand clearly the meaning of the statement (lines 428-439) in the context of the performed tests
Why the bottom size of soil opener l was selected as 35 mm?
Results
Why you choose very low forward speed of 0.25m/s to 0.45m/s. The designed device should be checked with high forward speed because speed will affect the overall efficiency of the device.
What represents X and Y axes in Figure 10?
Did you check the void ratio of soil disturbance hole shape section after hole forming operation at different speeds as void ration is an important property of soil that play an important role in the growth of plants.
Provide more detailed discussion about the factors that caused soil disturbance.
Conclusions
Conclusions section is well written but can be improved by adding one to two about the importance of this study theoretically or practically.
In the conclusion section, there can be added more perspective related to the future research work
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This is an interesting paper on an important topic.
The kinematic and mechanical analyses are quite detailed. It might be more appropriate for them to be included in appendices. There need to be more and better figures and photographs of the mechanical components. It is difficult to understand the mechanisms, how they operate and how they interact with each other.
The description of the experimental procedures needs much attention. The experimental apparatus is not well described; more and better figures and photographs will help. The measurement techniques for the hole depths, profiles and distance between them needs to be clarified. The results are not well reported; table 2, figure 10, table 3 and figure 11 are difficult to understand. For example, table 3 supposedly describes the angle, but none of the columns are labeled as angle. IT is not clear what figure 10 describes; it seems to be a number of unrelated colored lines.
The conclusions are quite brief. The paper would benefit from a better set of recommendations; the reader does not know what the take-away messages are. Is the machine good? It would be nice to understand what happens to the excess dirt that is removed from the holes. Also, how are the plants put into the holes; is there another machine or is this a manual process?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The abstract needs a better first sentence, that describes the issue being addressed; the current sentence assumes the reader knows about the problems of the current hole forming device.
There are two Figures 8. The second one should be labeled Figure 9.
The English still needs much improvement. There are many capitalization and punctuation errors. Articles (a, the) are missing or used incorrectly.
Many improvements have been made in the document, but it still needs more work before it can be published.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
