Vital Conditions to Remove Pollutants from Synthetic Wastewater Using Malaysian Ganoderma lucidum
, Firdaus Muhammad-Sukki 4,5,6,*, Wan Abd Al Qadr Imad Wan-Mohtar 5,7,* and Wan Hanna Melini Wan Mohtar 1,8,*
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors, well done for your great efforts! I must say that your presentation and overall scope are way better than those papers submitted to other top-tier journals! Well done! I have no reservations about an acceptance after a minor improvement as follows:
1. Please add some relevant & recent statistics/numbers in the introduction.
2. How could the findings contribute to knowledge progress in this field?
3. Figure 7: Please remove the grid lines from your graphs.
4. What were the limitations of this study? Any recommendations for future works?
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Our point-by-point responses are uploaded in a word file.
Please see the attachment.
Thank you.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript investigated the performance of Malaysian-G. lucidum in removing industrial pollutants in synthetic wastewater and identified the differences with Serbian-G. lucidum, using different stirring speeds and C/N ratios as the main analytical parameters. The interesting find was that Malaysian-G. lucidum had good potential in treating industrial wastewater. But there was limited discussion on the mechanisms of effective removal of COD and ammonia using Malaysian-G. lucidum. There are some specific comments given below.
Specific comments:
1. Why were these agitation speeds (25 rpm, 50 rpm and 100 rpm) and C/N ratios (C10N1, C13.3N1 and C16.7N1) chosen?
2. Were all experiments tested in triplicate? If yes, please add error bars to the associated figure of the removal effect.
3. The materials and methods section should be reconstructed, some information was lacked. In section of Calculations and statistical analysis, more detailed information was lacked, such as the specific settings of ANOVA analysis in this manuscript?
4. In Lines 144 and 167, 2.3 and 2.3 had the same title "Experimental Setup and operation conditions". Please check.
5. In Lines 216 - 217, why the values of COD removal efficiecny in Figure 3 were negative?
6. In Lines 348 - 349, Why was the legend of Figure 7 inconsistent? Please check the full text and correct errors throughout the text.
7. In Lines 271 - 273,"...0.8928 (COD) and 0.2442 (NH3-N) showing the pellet in this experiment does not affect the removal of pollutants from wastewater...", why AB was not significant?
8. Why did 3.4 not discuss the data at C10N1?
9. In Lines 338 - 340, "Adjustment of pH in the initial treatment reduced the acclimatisation fungal pellet, thus increasing the percentage of COD and ammonia in 24 h", how did the pH affect the G. lucidum?
10. In Lines 342 - 344, "Current experimental work indicated that the potential of self-acclimatisation of G. lucidum in treating COD and ammonia in synthetic wastewater has a similar potential to Serbian-G. lucidum culture." I’m confused on the “self-acclimatisation of Malaysian-G. lucidum”, what is it?
11. In Table 5, what are the concentrations of the target pollution?
12. In Lines 377,"...with a percentage removal range of 95% to 100% within 27 h of treatment...", there is no treatment time of 27 h in the experimental setup. Please check.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Our point-by-point responses are uploaded in a word file.
Please see the attachment.
Thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The aim of paper was to investigate the effect of different mixing speeds on the efficiency of wastewater treatment using special fungi. I propose the accept the paper for publication after minor revision.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Our point-by-point responses are uploaded in a word file.
Please see the attachment.
Thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
1. Line number 70, 71 sentence needs reframing as it is unclear.
2. Line number 85 more insight and literature on Ganoderma lucidum mycoremediation could be provided
3. Line 315 Figure 5b, arrow is faint and cannot be seen properly.
4. Line 350 Sentence unclear
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Our point-by-point responses are uploaded in a word file.
Please see the attachment.
Thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have addressed all the comments.
