Effect of legume intercropping on N<sub>2</sub>O emissions and CH<sub>4</sub> uptake during maize production in the Great Rift Valley, Ethiopia

Raji, Shimelis Gizachew; Dörsch, Peter

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-17-345-2020

Articles | Volume 17, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-17-345-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-17-345-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 2

Research article

|

22 Jan 2020

Research article |

| 22 Jan 2020

Effect of legume intercropping on N₂O emissions and CH₄ uptake during maize production in the Great Rift Valley, Ethiopia

Shimelis Gizachew Raji and Peter Dörsch

Download

Final revised paper (published on 22 Jan 2020)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 13 Aug 2019)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

AC1: 'Erratum figure 4', Peter Dörsch, 19 Aug 2019
RC1: 'Review of paper by Raji and Dorsch', Anonymous Referee #1, 04 Sep 2019
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer #1', Peter Dörsch, 26 Sep 2019
RC2: 'Review of bg-2019-303', Anonymous Referee #2, 13 Sep 2019
- AC3: 'responses to reviewer 2', Peter Dörsch, 26 Sep 2019

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (30 Sep 2019) by Edzo Veldkamp

AR by Peter Dörsch on behalf of the Authors (30 Sep 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (01 Oct 2019) by Edzo Veldkamp

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (18 Oct 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have used the recommendations provided to improve the manuscript. The manuscript does still need to be edited for general grammar/phrasing.

A few suggestions:

Introduction
Line 40: It still isn’t clear what is meant by CSA. What does climate-smart agriculture actually mean? If it is a proposed way forward, what way is being proposed? In Line 44 you mention ‘proof-of concept for …specific CSA practices’. Which specific practices? If what is meant here is instead that we need practices that are ‘climate-smart’ but we haven’t yet figured out what those practices might be, then this paragraph should be rephrased to make that clear. Otherwise, can you list ‘climate-smart’ practices that have been proposed but still need to be tested? I.e. are you referring to the use of legumes? If so, mention that specifically.

Materials and Methods
Line 134-135: change the order of this sentence so that it ends with “six treatments: [list of treatments…]” rather than “four replicates: [list of treatments…]”
Line 139: avoid using respectively when possible. Here, just state: “on May 30, 2015 and May 7, 2016”
Line 141: state specifically that all treatments except the unfertilized control received fertiliser application; also consider using “MF+…” for your intercropping treatments to make that clear.
Line 149: avoid using respectively when possible. Here, just state: “July 27 and Sept 4, 2015 and Aug 2 and Sept 8, 2016”
Line 157-160: Can you include a picture as supplementary information, so it is clear what the method looked like? Were the locations truly random (randomly generated) or just different each week? Also, consider rephrasing the last sentence to include more information about deployment. I.e. “…were pushed gently ~3 cm into the soil and included 2-5 live legume plants in the head-space. The septum was left open during deployment; once the chamber was inserted into the soil, the septum was closed and the base of the chamber was sealed around the circumference using moist clay.”
Line 183: Specify here that zero fluxes were included and, if correct, that coefficients were generally (as opposed to always) greater than 0.85.

General comment: as mentioned above, minimize the use of ‘respectively’. It will make the text easier to read. Suggested changes are to Lines: 25, 256, 269-270, 297, 427, 442 and Table 2.

Results
Line 254: “generally larger” is only true for the 3-week fluxes, so perhaps specify that, or list the 3-week ones followed by the six-week ones.
Line 264: be consistent with treatment names; here the ‘M-F’ treatment is called 0N-control, elsewhere it is called the ‘0N0P treatment’ or the ‘unfertilized control’ or the ‘unfertilized maize monocrop’
Line 268: give units

Hide

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (22 Nov 2019) by Edzo Veldkamp

AR by Peter Dörsch on behalf of the Authors (24 Nov 2019) Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (29 Nov 2019) by Edzo Veldkamp

AR by Peter Dörsch on behalf of the Authors (02 Dec 2019)

Download

Article (1349 KB)
Full-text XML

Short summary

Intercropping maize with forage legumes can benefit Ethiopian smallholder farmers by providing cheap nitrogen and valuable livestock feed. We measured N₂O emissions and maize yields and found that high legume biomasses may enhance N₂O emissions per unit of harvested maize but that, after mulching, legume N can partly replace expensive mineral N. Thus, legume intercropping can be a valid strategy in the framework of climate-smart agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa.

Effect of legume intercropping on N2O emissions and CH4 uptake during maize production in the Great Rift Valley, Ethiopia

Download

Interactive discussion

Peer-review completion

Effect of legume intercropping on N₂O emissions and CH₄ uptake during maize production in the Great Rift Valley, Ethiopia