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The findings are relevant for agricultural researchers, extension services, and farmers seeking cost-effective, biologically based strategies to improve silage quality. By optimizing alfalfa silage production, the research supports global food security through enhanced livestock productivity and sustainable farming practices.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Curtis Daehler, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
**PeerJ Staff Note:** Although the Academic and Section Editors are happy to accept your article as being scientifically sound, a final check of the manuscript shows that it would benefit from further editing. Therefore, please identify necessary edits and address these while in proof stage.
There are a few editorial modifications that need to be made. The technical editor should find and note these before publication.
No additional comments.
The findings are interesting and contribute to the scientific literature, now that the interactions are considered.
The authors have attempted to address my comments. Any further edits should come from the editor.
Please address all reviewers' comments.
The author has addressed all the issues raised, and I believe the manuscript is ok for publications after making some few minor corrections below
1. Where the p-values are lower than 0.001, us “<0.001” (maintain 2 decimal places and one significant figure).
2. Provide headings for the results for clarity, you can use the table title as the headings
3. In line 246 – 247 ….after silage fermentation which is a limitation of the present study.
4. In figure 1 caption, correct it as figure 1 not 3
5. Remove the entire column for mold from table 2. Just state in the results thay molds were not detected in all the treatments.
no comment
no comment
no comment
You objective statement implies strongly that you are interested in the interaction of inoculant and glucose dose, but you seem to ignore this in the discussion of results. The results and discussion should be rewritten with the consideration of the interactions and only discuss main effects when the significant interactions do not include the main effects. For example, it is perfectly permissible to discuss the glucose impacts on DM at 60 days of ensiling because the interactions with glucose are not significant.
2. Study design
The study design is fine. However, the multi-factor factorial can lead to considerable confusion when interactions are present. However, these interactions are very important to those trying to ensile alfalfa and should be considered.
The findings appear to be accurate and valid.
29 You really cannot say this because of the glucose*innoculant interaction.
30-31 Harvest*inoculant interaction so you cannot say this.
32-33 The interactions prevent this statement.
36-37 Interactions prevent this statement except for yeast.
53 delete ‘a’ in a high WSC…
65 “into” should be replaced with “with” or “onto”.
76-78 This implies that you are interested in the interactions.
133-135 I still think more information should be added here. What were the fixed and random effects?
143-146 The interactions prohibits you from discussing main effects.
147 The p-value of the interaction is 0.019.
150-155 Again, the 3-way interaction prevents discussion of the main effects.
160 Again, the interactive differences should be discussed rather than the main effects.
164-170 Again, interactions.
165 Table 2
179 L. plantarum was not different from control.
202 The symbols need to be defined on the figure.
Table 2. The P value for Harvest*glucose should be checked.
Table 3 under Harvest should be post-harvest rather than pro-harvest.
Figure 1 does not define the indicators of the level of significance.
Please address all reviewers' comments.
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The manuscript reported a study on the effects of glucose spraying and lactic acid bacteria inoculation applied to high-moisture alfalfa during pre- and post-harvest periods on silage fermentation and feed quality. The findings of the study are of interest as the work integrates both agronomy and silage fermentation science. However, in addition to language and grammar improvements, some aspects of the manuscripts need to be improved prior to publication.
Provide adequate details of the statistical analysis; if possible, add the statistical model.
Suggestions for improvement are in the comments below
To improve the quality of the manuscript, the following suggestions could be considered:
Abstract
The background in the abstract is too long. 1-2 sentences are enough. So, you can add more results quantitatively.
The results section of the abstract should take the larger part. What is presented here is just a conclusion. You need to add some results, especially the relevant ones, from which conclusions were drawn.
Having different treatments, it will be of interest to recommend the best treatments for adoption.
Introduction
Add the objectives of the study immediately after the hypothesis.
L37-38, which is widely used
L47 “preprats” correct this
Materials and methods
L80-87 merge the two paragraphs since they are all talking about pre-harvest treatment applications.
For clarity, provide a separate sub-heading for the chemical analysis and statistical analysis.
Provide adequate details of the statistical analysis; if possible, add the statistical model.
Results
To be more consistent, add the main effect of the inoculation in all the tables, like you did for harvest and glucose dose. Hence, no need for figures 1 and 2, since it is only duplicates of what is in the table.
L126-127: no need to separate the paragraphs
Discussion
In the discussion, it should be acknowledged that L. Plantarum is homofermentative, while L. Citerum is heterofermentative, which could be the reason for lower pH in L. Plantarum since homofermentative produce more of lactic acid, and lactic acid is 10 to 12 times stronger than any of the other major acids to potentially reduce pH (Kung et al. 2018 http://dx.doi.org/10.3168/jds.2017-13909). However, no organic acids were determined after the silage fermentation; hence, it should be stated as one of the limitations of the study.
**PeerJ Staff Note:** It is PeerJ policy that additional references suggested during the peer-review process should only be included if the authors are in agreement that they are relevant and useful.
Conclusion
L268 .....improved silage fermentation and are therefore recommended.
The study demonstrates the value of the timing of adding glucose or inoculants on silage quality. There are a number of interesting findings, and the authors have properly replicated the experiment. I commend them on their work.
There are numerous grammatical errors throughout, such as starting sentences with an abbreviation, misspelled words, etc. That should be corrected. Otherwise, the paper is written well.
The experimental design is good, and the procedures appear to have been carried out correctly.
The authors seem to consider their interactions as an afterthought instead of adhering to the rules that when interactions are present, we don’t discuss main effects. The interactions are very interesting, and the authors should focus on those rather than on the main effects.
There are no indicators of experimental error in any of the tables.
Background
Line
17 suggest … difficult to ensile…
47 I don’t think preprats is a word.
82 Is this on a % of DM basis?119
119 I suggest that DMI be removed. This formula is very limited in its utility.
121 More details should be provided here.
131 When the interactions are significant, this prevents discussion of the main effects involved in the interaction, so this section should be rewritten to reflect this.
157 The glucose x inoculant interaction prevents this discussion.
162 Again, the interaction prevents this discussion.
172 This should be reworded. The interaction is not significant, and this statement doesn’t say that it is, but it is confusing.
173 You should mention the 3-way interaction and discuss it for ADL.
177 alfalfa
182 This is the opposite of the color bar on the right of the dots.
223 Since this follows along with the previous discussion, “on the other hand” should not be used.
246 Yes, it was statistically significant, but is this difference really significant biologically?
262 The really interesting part of this study is the interactions. These should be discussed rather than the main effects.
265 It is hard to determine whether or not this statement is true since the DM conservation data were not shown.
Table 1: I suggest adding more information about the meaning of Harvest.
Is the glucose dose a % of DM? This should be noted.
What are the units for the bacterial and yeast counts?
Table 2. Same comments as for Table 1.
Figure 1. No mention of what p-value the superscripts indicate.
Figure 2. Same
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