Dear Authors:

Thank you for uploading your replies to referee comments. I appreciate you addition of the flowchart (Figure A1) and reorganization in your revised manuscript. Both referees found scientific values in your manuscript, but they strongly recommend thorough revision. Especially, the referees claimed that the manuscript needs more clarification, especially for Method sections. I have to say that this does not ask you to add more explanations; indeed, referee #1 highly recommend shortening the manuscript. Although you have tried to ‘reduce the size of manuscript’, I recommend again doing this by being more concise and focused. Finally, I conclude that the manuscript needs major (thorough) revision and then reconsidered.

Dear Authors:

Thank you for uploading your reply and revised manuscript. I appreciate your effort to truncate the manuscript; now the manuscript became clearer and more focused. It seems also interesting for me to include new results on herbage-use efficiency, which was not included in the first submission. I did not receive additional referee comment and conclude that the manuscript would be acceptable for publication.