PONE-D-20-36146

Effect of different long-term fertilizer management on nitrogen fixing bacteria community in a double-cropping paddy field of southern China

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr.Haiming Tang,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Balasubramani Ravindran, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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[This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31872851), Innovative Research Groups of the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2019JJ10003).]

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4) During our internal evaluation of the manuscript, we found significant text overlap between your submission and the following previously published works.

- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63639-8

- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137633

- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-6968.2006.00317.x

- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63639-8

We would like to make you aware that copying extracts from previous publications, especially outside the methods section, word-for-word is unacceptable, even for works which you authored. In addition, the reproduction of text from published reports has implications for the copyright that may apply to the publications.

Please revise the manuscript to rephrase the duplicated text, cite your sources, and provide details as to how the current manuscript advances on previous work. Please note that further consideration is dependent on the submission of a manuscript that addresses these concerns about the overlap in text with published work.

We will carefully review your manuscript upon resubmission, so please ensure that your revision is thorough

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Dear Authors, you should address my recommendations highlighted across the text, as follows.

Introduction: you should amend the text as pointed out.

Materials and methods: the amendments should be performed as suggested.

Results: the text should be corrected according to my comments. The tables should be revised following my indications relevant to the presentations of statistical outcome and the legends should be modified as recommended.

Discussion and Conclusions: the highlighted amendments should be addressed.

References: the citation formatting should be checked.

Reviewer #2: Comments to the Author

In this study, a long-term fertilizer field experiment were utilized to investigate the effects of different fertilizer management on soil nitrogen fixing bacteria community in a double-cropping rice paddy field of southern China. Therefore, the soil autotrophic azotobacter and nitrogenase activities, diversities of cbbLR and nifH gene, abundance of cbbLR and nifH gene, cluster analysis of cbbLR and nifH gene, community structure of cbbLR and nifH gene under 34-years long-term fertilizer regime in the double-cropping rice paddy field of southern China were studied in this paper. The field experiment were well designed and performed, the results were well addressed, and obtained many valuable results in this manuscript.

Therefore, the manuscript can be published after a minor revision. And there still some places need revised, such as:

1. Please ensure your paper has continuous line number.

2．The title of this manuscript need to modify as “Effect of different long-term fertilizer management on soil nitrogen fixing bacteria community in a double-cropping rice paddy field of southern China”.

3. In the “Abstract” section,

Page 2 Line 5: the “information on” should be modified to “information about”.

Page 2 Line 7: the “the 34-year” should modified to “the 34-years”, and other places were also need to revised.

Page 2 Line 7-8: the “nitrogen fixing bacteria community under double-cropping rice field in southern China” should be modified to “soil nitrogen fixing bacteria community under the double-cropping rice paddy field in southern of China”, and other places were also need to be revised.

Page 2 Line 12-13: the “The results showed that the diversity index of cbbLR gene and nifH gene were increased with RF and OM treatments,” should be modified to “The results showed that diversity index of cbbLR gene and nifH gene with RF and OM treatments were increased”, and other places were also need to revised.

4. In the “Introduction” section,

Please be sure to check that verbal tense was used when indicating the facts (usually in the present tense).

What is your innovation in the present study? You need to add more recent references and improve your introduction.

The information about hypothesize of this manuscript were need to added in the “Introduction” section.

5. In the “Materials and methods” section,

In the “Experimental design” section, some more detail information about the fertilizer treatments need to add, such as the amount of N, P2O5, K2O.

The more detail date of soil sample was need to add.

Some professional terms need to be supplied as full name at the first time in the same section, such as PCR, DGGE, and so on.

6. In the “Results” section, the information about significance needs to add.

7. In the “Discussion” section,

Page 11 Line 5: the detail name of “other fertilizer treatments” need to added.

Page 11 Line 5: “were suggestion” should modify to “were suggested”, and other places of this manuscript need to revise.

8. In the Conclusion section,

“nitrogen fixing” should modify to “soil nitrogen fixing”, “activities” should modify to “activity”, and other places of this manuscript need to revise.

9. Some more references were need to add,

In the “Introduction” section, some more references need added, such as Page 3 Line 20-22.

In the “Disscussion” section, some more references also need added, such as Page 12 Line 19-22.

10. Overall, this study provided some useful information, and it needed modification some grammatical errors throughout the MS (as presented in some examples below). The author is encouraged to seek help from a native English speaker to refine and improve the writing.

Page 2 Line 10: “rice straw residue” should modify to “rice straw”, and other places of this manuscript need to revise.

Page 3 Line 29: “practices” should modify to “practice”, and other places of this manuscript need to revise.

Page 4 Line 20: “was” should modify to “were”, and other places of this manuscript need to revise.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-20-36146_reviewer_Revised.pdf

Effect of different long-term fertilizer managements on soil nitrogen fixing bacteria community in a double-cropping rice paddy field of southern China

PONE-D-20-36146R1

Dear Dr. Haiming Tang,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Balasubramani Ravindran, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Dear Authors, you have correctly addressed my comments and, therefore, your manuscript can be accepted for publication in my opinion.

Reviewer #2: The authors have adequately addressed my comments and this manuscript is now acceptable for publication

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Gianluca Caruso

Reviewer #2: No