In-Line Technologies for the Analysis of Important Milk Parameters during the Milking Process: A Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors made a broad overview of the current aspects that define the quality of milk. The manuscript is well written with a thorough development of the subject.
I report some changes to improve the quality of the text:

lane 39: (i.e. psychological state and genetics effects)

lane 47: delete Produced

lane 49: proteins

lanes 93-94: please provide reference.

lane 202: the F/P ratio value

lanes 232-233: please replace urine with urea

lane 274: replace Somatic Cell Counts (SCC) with SCC

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your careful assessment of our manuscript and your encouraging comments. We have accepted all your comments and modified the manuscript to its current form. We have marked the changes in the text in green to make the orientation easier for you.

The performed changes can be summarized in several points:

• All minor modifications of the text were made as required.
• Missing reference has been added.

We appreciate all the comments and thank you again for your quick assessment of the manuscript. We hope that in its current amended form it will meet the your criteria.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper focused on herd-level analytical methods for the assessment of milk quality traits. The paper is in general well written.

Here few suggestions for the authors:

Line 47: "Produced ... production ...". This is a repetition.

Line 54: In my opinion "legacy" is not the correct term

Line 56: Please change "web" with "chain".

Line 57: "Vitamin transport ...." problems? impairment?

Line 58: "Induction of enzyme activity through free radicals" Not clear

Lines 75-76: please check if "washing resistance" is the correct definition

Line 79: Change "microflora" with "microbiota"

Lines 79-80: This sentence sounds incomplete or at least it needs more details

Line 82: Can you better define the association between fat and milking frequency?

Line 91: "motive ... motive".

Line 92: It doesn't sounds correct. Maybe "excessive mobilization of fat" ?

Line 103: not only bacterial

Lines 109-110: not true. I would change with "environmental pathogens that could be difficult to be eradicated from the herd".

Lines 117-118: Please check the sentence, it is not clear.

Line 123: I would change "data speed evaluation" in "fast evaluation of data"

Chapter 3: is it possible to include a chapter about afla-toxins?

Lines 177-178: "as microbial contamination" sounds incorrect. Please check.

Lines 187-195: Move lines 187-190 after lines 191-195.

Lines 209-228: More information about the importance of lactose in milk can be retrieved from te review Costa et al. 2019

Lines 232 and 233: Urine -> Urea

Lines 248-260: SCC is an important parameter as you stated before. More information should be given. Please check Franzoi et al. 2019, JDS and similar papers for recent data.

Line 275: SCC are described in 3.5 not 3.2

Chapter 4: in general, it would be interesting to included a statement about costs for each method

Line 291: a review of parameters that can be evaluated using IR can be found in De Marchi et al, 2014.

Line 327: a parenthesis is missing.

Line 329: "this database" should be "databases".

Line 352: why "n.d."?

Line 357: same as before

Line 419: "data providing methods" can be "data driven methods"

Line 422: "milk milked" is a repetition

Figure 3: in my experience NIR can't be used to estimate SCC. Can you please add a reference about this?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your careful assessment of our manuscript and your encouraging comments. We have accepted all your comments and modified the manuscript to its current form. We have marked the changes in the text in green to make the orientation easier for you.

The performed changes can be summarized in several points:

• All minor modifications of the text were made as required.
• The inaccurate and incomplete formulations pointed out by the reviewers were corrected by finding more accurate information in the source literature.
• Using the recommended literature, we have expanded the subchapters "Lactose content" and "Somatic cell count (SCC)" as required.
• The methods presented in Chapter 4 have been supplemented by a brief discussion of costs as suggested by reviewer.
• The subchapter on Aflatoxins was included in Chapter 3 as required.

We appreciate all the comments and thank you again for your quick assessment of the manuscript. We hope that in its current amended form it will meet the your criteria.