Dear Authors,

Please address below comments from the reviewer. I think it's important to incorporate those comments into the manuscript. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,
Min-Hui


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General Comments
Based on the Community Land Model version 4.5 (CLM4.5) framework, a new perennial crop sub-model (CLM-Palm) was developed in this study. The model structure was reasonable, and the parameters were comprehensively considered. In addition, the authors also analyzed the results logically. This research is novel and important to land surface model, particularly crop model, development and biodiversity studies. This manuscript can be accepted after clarifying several minor concerns.

Comments
1. To address the importance of oil palm, I suggest that the authors discuss the global total area of oil palm or the ratio of the Indonesia oil palm area to the global total oil palm area in the first paragraph.
2. Line 85, if “annual” is used as “occurring once every year”, it is an adjective. I suggest using “annual growing season” here.
3. Line 102, change “In this context” to “In this study” or “In this paper”.
4. In the supplement file, GDD and PLAI were not defined before use.
5. The authors can define C, as “carbon (C)”, when it first appears; then, use C in the rest of the manuscript. Or use carbon everywhere. Using C and carbon randomly is not a standard way for scientific writing. Nitrogen/N has the same issue.
6. I suggest inserting a table in Section 3.1 to indicate the general information, such as climate condition, fertilization period, of the eight sites. A table like this can make Section 3.1 more straightforward, and the readers can check each site more quickly, which is helpful for understanding Section 4.1.
7. Line 431, the described fluctuation between yield and precipitation is not very obvious. Can the authors give more detailed description or show the detrended curves?
8. Line 483, in my view, NPP is (GPP – maintenance respiration – growth respiration) for the entire plant. So, I cannot understand what “leaf NPP” is. In addition, I wonder why leaf litter production is the only measurement included into field measured NPP? Can the authors re-phase this sentence or explain this sentence more?
9. Line 499, even temperature does not change much during the year in Indonesia, can radiation influence yield? Or does the simulated yield only response to precipitation?
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