PONE-D-23-39906Cover crops support the climate change mitigation potential of agroecosystemsPLOS ONE

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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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: Of course the study has lot of importance under current problematic agricultural situations to sustain both food production as well as soil health. The study findings are interesting. All the sections of the manuscript well defined and clearly written. Results with all data and discussion parts are described in detail giving appropriate justifications. However, in the manuscript, I found few minor corrections/modification, highlighted with yellow colors and comments within the manuscript itself for improvement. Further, many of grammatical language errors were found within the manuscript and need to be improve.

Reviewer #2: Comments

This manuscript reports systematic literature review study in which research platforms "Web of Science" and "Google Scholar" were used to explore the literature. In general, this manuscript is specific to cover crops significantly exceed their climate costs. Author claimed this study is first to include land use effects based on the yield gain caused by cover crops. Authors concluded that, if all maize cropping acreage in the EU-27 were to include cover crops, GHG emissions from EU-27 agriculture could be reduced by 13.0%. Based on this result, authors recommend that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union should continue to accelerate the integration of cover crops into farming.

The specific comments are given below.

Clear take home message in the abstract is required.

Abstract does not provide sufficient information about the literature review study.

The Introduction is well written but does not present the reader with sufficient information on the problem being addressed.

What are the objectives of this literature review study?

The methods are largely well written. Although details of the methods adopted for this study provided in separate file, same is required to include in the methodology section.

The Statistical Analysis is pretty much absent.

The paper has no Conclusion and just kind of ends as per specific Journal style, instead author provided policy recommendations.

Citations are complete and up to date.

Overall, this paper needs a revision as per suggestions provided in the “Comment box” of edited paper as well as provided below.

 

Line wise corrections suggested below

Line 45

Instead “as well as lower required fertilizers, pesticides, and water”

write “reduced agricultural”

Line 58

As an additional climate benefit, cover crops remove carbon from the

atmosphere during their growth while their residues and rhizodeposits are transformed to

stable soil organic matter…..by retaining soil moisture.

Line 88

(Table ). Table number is not mentioned.

Line 91

No references

Line 178

2 − =

5 ∗ ℎ ∗ 273

1000…

Supporting references?

Line 183&184

One by Kaye and Quemada [21] and another by Carrer et al. [14].

Delete this sentence write only reference

Line 233 & 234

Production emissions for seed production, dispatch and

additional machinery costs

Not understand what subtitle author want to represent

Line 253 (253)

How relative yield gain and absolute yield gain estimated?explain in methods section.

Line 284

Delete “found in” and insert sentence “reported by”

Line 348

Mention year ----IPCC (Year or reference number).

Line 542

Conclusion point is missing as per Journals format.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Dr Vasudev Meena, ICAR-Directorate of Rapeseed-Mustard Research, Bharatpur, India

Reviewer #2: Yes: Dr. S.D. Jadhao, Professor, Department of Soil Science, Dr. PDKV, Akola

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-23-39906_reviewer.pdf

Attachment

Submitted filename: MS PLOS ONE.pdf

Attachment

Submitted filename: Comments.docx

Cover crops support the climate change mitigation potential of agroecosystems

PONE-D-23-39906R1

Dear Dr. Peter Breunig,

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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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Abhay Omprakash Shirale, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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: (No Response)

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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: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

**********

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

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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: All the raised comments or modifications incorporated and addressed well. However, in the reference section, the journals name not followed in same pattern, either write their abbreviation or elaboration.

Reviewer #2: Author addressed most of the comments of reviewer. Overall, this paper needs to refine considering minor revision as suggested. Finally after addressing all comments, handling editor to take decision on acceptance of MS for PLOS one. From my side paper accepted as author has been addressed most of the comments given during review process.

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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: Vasudev Meena, Crop Production Unit, ICAR-Directorate of Rapeseed-Mustard Research, Bharatpur, India- 321 303

Reviewer #2: Yes: Dr. Shyam Dalsing Jadhao

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