Dear referee,

On behalf of the authors, I would like to thank the reviewer for their constructive feedback on the article. I will review the figures and axis as suggested. A full review of the results and discussion will be provided in the second draft with the aim of providing a clearer picture on both tillage and traffic treatments. 

Kind regards,

David 

Dear Editor and authors.

I foud the study quit interesting and well-worth to be publish. It has been used a proper and very interesting methodology for the roots sysmtem analysis. 

Authors:  On behalf of the authors, we our very thankful for the reviewers positive feedback and interest in the study. 

I had some problems to understand several results in the figures. Mainly.. In the X-axis it is difficult to see well the combitation of the treatments because is like a continuos line. 

Secondly and due to the 9 combinations would be more appropiate to use the same secuency of those combination in all the figures. 

I suggest a better way to present those figures. 

Also it is important was indicate the meaning of thge bars in the leyend of the figure. 

It is difficult to see in the figures the effect of the tillage and the effect of the trafikking individually. 

Authors: Point accepted. We agree that the figures require further attention to detail and will correct same. We will ensure that the next draft is consistent with treatments in the figures. 

Regarding the abstract I would suiggest give some numbers mora than qualify sentences. 

Authors: Understood. We will add the statistical significance of the results into the abstract.

The introduction and the methodology are quite OK. 

THe resuts need better way to understand figures and the effect of the factors.  

Authors:  We have prepared the results in a better format for the next draft which will hopefully improve clarity of the results.

The discussion is quite long and also includes some data thta could go to resuts. 

Finally the discussion should give a  clear picture of the two factors. Tillage and traffiking. Two sections . 

Authors: Thank you for your constructive feedback. We will amend for the next draft. 

IN the way is written it looks again a show of results with some discussion. NO clreaer picture of the Tillage and trafkiking.

Best regards. 

The manuscript addresses the influence of tillage and traffic management on soil properties and root development. It has a good level of detail and it fits nicely with the topic of the journal. The overall structure of the paper is good, however, there are some concepts that need to be more clearly defined.

Authors: On behalf of authors, I would like to thank Referee 2 for his/her time, helpful and constructive comments on our work. 

Abstract: I think it should be better stated which factor is more important management wise and its consequences.

Authors: Suggestion accepted. The managment systems between traffic and tillage are highly inter-related We will improve the message in the next draft to clearly represent managment approaches and consequences.

Introduction:  The purpose of the paper needs to be rephrased as it's not clear they are assessing the influence of trafficking. The cultivation and traffic management description should be moved to methodology.

Authors:  Thank you for your feedback. A full review of the introduction will be conducted to sharpen the focus on both traffic managment strategies. 

M&M: In my opinion,  it would be important to add a description of the tillage history of the site. The traffic regimes need to be better defined specifying or justifying how the combination of deep tillage without trafficking is possible.  It appears the concept of controlled traffic farming (CTF) is not mentioned again throughout the paper. Regarding the Soil Moisture Deficit Model, what are the inputs of the model? only weather parameters?.  Why did the authors choose to transform all the data to be normally distributed instead of using a non-parametric test?

Authors:  Agreed, the history of the site is an important component of tillage and trafficking trial work. We will add more details in M&M to improve the visibility of the treatments conducted. The inputs of the model include max and min temperatures, rainfall, windspeed (M/s) and sunshine hours per day. We chose to transform data that did not show normality. Each dataset was tested for normality before conducting any statisitcal analysis. Parametric tests have more statisitcal power, testing the mean of each dataset. 

Results: In general, figures need substantial revision. Legends should indicate the meaning of the treatments as in figure 8 and the same format (sequence of treatments) should be kept throughout. Also, the description of the results seems confusing at times.

Authors: Agreed - We will revise the figures and improve on the consistency such as formatting. 

Discussion: The discussion is too long and also it's a bit redundant as it includes some data that should go to results or be removed. I think it could be useful to split it into tillage or traffic management effects.

Authors: We will split the discussion section into two sections and thank you for your helpful feedback.

Conclusions: they should state better what the recommendations are from an agronomic point of view and also the reflection of whether it would be really possible to leave traffic-free zones and what the advantage would be instead of establishing Low-pressure tyre zones? 

Authors: Point taken and we will amend.