Study of the Targeted Regulation of Rice Drying Characteristics and Quality

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have read the manuscript “Study of the Targeted Regulation of Rice Drying Characteristics and Quality” submitted for the publication in Applied Sciences.

Authors investigated the relationship between various experimental factors and quality indicators of rice drying.  They established optimized parameter combination of hot air temperature, hot air humidity, initial moisture content and hot air velocity to improve the drying characteristics, processing quality, and nutritional quality of rice after drying.

The abstract and introduction have been written concisely, actually for the needs of scientific publications - they constitute a good introduction to the rest of the manuscript. However, the manuscript lacks a description of the research problem, the purpose of the paper and research hypotheses.

Authors discussed various methods to ensure the quality of rice drying and the changes in rice indexes and conducted research on the drying quality change mechanism of high-quality japonica rice to study the characteristics of rice quality change. The experiment response surface (RSM) was designed. The analysis of the mapping relationship between drying parameters and drying quality indicators allowed to established a regression model. The effects of various process parameters on rice quality were analyzed and the parameters to establish a mathematical model relationship between the regulation parameters and drying quality were optimized.

Materials and Methods – while the material and the method of preparing it for further processing were described in sufficient detail, the methodology was partly described very briefly. The methodology, especially the procedures for determining individual compounds, should be described in detail and supplemented in the manuscript.

Fig 2. Contribution diagram of factor response indexes – charts should be in the form of bar. Pie charts are appropriate for fewer (two, maximum three) factors being analyzed. Additionally, data labels and legends in charts could be larger.

The results of the experiment and their discussion are described in great detail.  The conclusions are properly formulated on the basis of the conducted research.

References - increase the number and change some references to improve the quality of the manuscript, there are a lot of self-citations, which is not an appropriate in scientific work. There are many other publications on this topic, available in open access.

In addition, the reviewer noticed some editorial errors, such as typos, font size, lack of spaces - to be corrected when preparing the final version of the manuscript.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestions on this article. All the detailed changes are presented in the pdf file and the new manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In this research rice quality characteristics in dependence of drying parameters and drying quality indicators are mathematically modeled by response surface experiment. Optimization was done to obtain establish a mathematical model relationship between the regulation parameters and drying quality.

Designing process reference charts with the dependence of waist burst increase rate, whole rice rate, fatty acid value, resistant starch concentration, germination rate, protein mass fraction, and fat mass fraction from drying time is new addition to the theoretical knowledge base which also have significant practical application in rice primary processing. Expanding knowledge base, with practical mathematical modeling that can be used in actual processing operations.

Materials and methods section provides enough detail for the experiments to be replicated. Some needed corrections are noted in the manuscripts’ pdf text.

Conclusion section mainly adequately derives conclusion statements from presented and disscussed results in this work. Conclusions answer to all issues raised in goal of the research.

Cited literature is adequate and contemporary

All abbreviations used in all tables, must be explained below the table.

All other specific corrections are noted in the manuscripts’ pdf file.

All detailed comments are made in manuscripts' pdf file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Moderate editing of English language required

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestions on this article. All the detailed changes are presented in the pdf file and the new manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The submitted article evaluated the drying quality change mechanism of high-quality japonica rice to study the characteristics of rice quality change, using a response surface (RSM) experiment to analyze the mapping relationship between drying parameters and drying quality indicators and establish a regression model. The article covers an interesting topic; however, it requires some improvements listed below:

Page 1, In the abstract use numbers with two decimal spaces like in the rest of the article,

Page 1, lines 32-35, elaborate in more detail the main methods to ensure the quality of rice drying,

Page 2 line 49, consider replacing hot wind with hot air and wind speed with airspeed,

Page 5, line 175, The experimental scheme and results of the response surface methodology are shown in Figure 2, not Figure 3, please correct.

Page 8, lines 194-199, move note below Table 3,

Consider including the legend below Figures for RSM,

Pages 18-19, consider removing the numbering of the drawn conclusions and make them more concise,

Page 18, line 448, unnecessary sentence, please remove.

Pages 21-23, use abbreviations of the journals in the reference list.

Minor editing of English language required.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestions on this article. All the detailed changes are presented in the pdf file and the new manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript has been corrected and I accept the further steps to be taken by the editors for publication.

Author Response

Thank you for providing your valuable suggestions on this article.

Reviewer 2 Report

Quality of the work is improved.

Maybe in previous review the correction regarding wind - air was not clear enough, please change in all document term wind into term air (not only for hot wind, but also for wind speed, wind temperature, wind shunt ect.). The best is to use find-replace word function

Author Response

Point 1:Maybe in previous review the correction regarding wind - air was not clear enough, please change in all document term wind into term air (not only for hot wind, but also for wind speed, wind temperature, wind shunt ect.). The best is to use find-replace word function

Response 1:Thanks for the comments and the affirmation.The sentence has been rectified.

Thank you for providing your valuable suggestions on this article.

Reviewer 3 Report

The author's reply is fair. The article can be accepted.

Author Response

Thanks for the comments and the affirmation.

Thank you for providing your valuable suggestions on this article.