The Influence of Physical Treatments on Phytochemical Changes in Fresh Produce after Storage and Marketing
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The Influence of Physical Treatments on Phytochemical Changes 2 in Fresh Produce after Storage and Marketing
The subject of the manuscript is relevant and original. It is suitable for the Agronomy journal.
The main aim of this review was to provide useful information on the influence of physical treatments on phytochemical changes in fresh produce after storage and marketing. The authors carefully reviewed research studies, presenting and discussing them in individual chapters, i.e. pre-harvest factors resulting in changes to the content of active ingredients after harvest, physical treatments, physical treatments resulting in phytochemical changes after harvest. The contents of this concise review seem very useful to agricultural practice, and the information can have practical application and serve as information basis for such practices and future research.
There are no major reservations to the abstract.
Introduction:
The introduction outlines the problem discussed in the review.
Conclusions
The conclusions should contain more information relevant for the research subject, i.e. summarising the effects of physical treatments on phytochemical changes in fresh produce after storage and marketing. At this moment, the chapter contains a number of proposed future research, which is important as well, but it should also sum up the aspect mentioned in the manuscript title.
References
The selection of references is correct, very up-to-date. However, the referencing style of all of the references is inconsistent with the style guide of the Agronomy Journal, so please adjust it so that it is in line with the journal requirements. E.g. (numbering and in some references doi instead of https://... )
Subject to minor adjustments, the review paper can be published in the Agronomy journal.
Author Response
In the conclusion, a paragraph regarding the physical treatments have been added in association to the title and, of course, to the whole article (lines 337-342).
References were re-formatted according to the journal format.
Reviewer 2 Report
The review paper The Influence of Physical Treatments on Phytochemical Changes in Fresh Produce after Storage and Marketing shows the effectiveness of certain physical treatments on changing the nutritional composition of certain fruits and vegetables. Numerous scientific papers dealing with this topic have been used to write the paper. The paper is written clearly, concisely. The attached table is very good because in one place there are products and treatments as well as changes that occur on phytochemicals. I think the manuscript is good and I recommend accepting it.
Manuscript is good. A lot of literature on the same topic has been covered in one place. The author's competence for the processed topic can be seen. It will serve as a review paper to other researchers in the field. Recommendation to the authors to continue with such research.
Author Response
No recommendation.
Reviewer 3 Report
In general, I would strongly recommend to check language of the manuscript by a native English speaker, several sentences should be re-phrased and re-write. Moreover, in my opinion, only mentioning the previous findings are not adequate in a review, their results should also be discussed. However I have some suggestions and comments below to improve its quality:
- The newly prepared template of the journal has not been used
L17-19: In my opinion, the following sentence should be removed: "In 17 recent years, the nutritional and bioactive compounds in many plants and plant parts have 18 been reviewed."
L21-27: please re-write and combine two similar sentences: "The aim of this...prestorage physical treatments."
L38: "fresh produce" or "fresh products"?
L43,51,58,92,96, etc.: the same problem as above in "produce"; please check the whole manuscript
L50: the title for heading is not written properly, please re-phrase it
L51: please revise the sentence, "The quality...only maintained"
L84: please revise "he"
L115: please re-write the heading, remove "(Table 1)"
L121: re-write "In work done with bell peppers"
L132-135: add reference please: "That treatment...in color."
L136: revise "to harvested" to "to harvest"
L146: correct "that fruit with fruit that"
- The references 36, 37 should be cited at the end of each correlated text, not in the middle, the other similar must be checked through the manuscript
L216,217: please check and revise the sentence, "(carotenoid content increased)" no makes sense in this manner
L220,221: any reference for "This phenomenon ... protect the plasmic membrane."
L229,230: according to authors "the use of chitosan as an edible coating has been reported to enhance total phenolic and flavonoid contents and antioxidant activity during postharvest storage.", describe how it was increased? and the rationale for this enhancement?
L249,250: please discuss the reason in "while the quantity of isoalliin, the main organosulfur compound in black onions, is dramatically higher than that found in fresh onions"
- the references' numbering must be 1, 2, not [1], [2], etc.
Good luck!
Author Response
First, every paper that is submitted and published from Volcani Institute must be sent, before submission, to an English-language editor/specialist. We had done the same for our article. Therefore, the comment made by reviewer 3 regarding the English was not so fair. Yet, the article was sent again for English language editing and we hope that the English was improved.
Lines 17-19 were removed and lines 21-27 were revised. The whole abstract was revised for better understanding the aim of this MS.
All references in the next were cited at the end of each relevant data.
Lines 216-217 (based on the reviewer) – The carotenoids in pepper fruit are increase during ripening and maturation. The chlorophyll is degraded and carotene and lutein increase.
Reference was added in line 221 (revised version) regarding comment in lines 220-221.
An explanation was added (lines 331-332) regarding the chitosan enhancement (229-230).
The results were discussed in the text, based on the reviewer suggestion, and a special paragraph was added in the conclusion (line 342-353) that summed up and explained the possible mode-of-action regarding phytochemicals/bioactive compounds in association with physical treatments.
References appearance was re-formatted based on the journal guidelines.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
Thank you for the corrections suggested. Actually due to the presence of obvious mistakes concerning to its language, I recommended checking once more in this case to improve the quality of MS.
Good luck!
Author Response
We are totally agree that the terminology of fresh produce or fresh products should be clarified and corrected. Therefore, The fresh produce or fresh products ambiguous has been cleared and corrected along the whole text. In addition, the English has been re-polished.
