Effect of Fermentation Time and Blending Ratio on Microbial Dynamics, Nutritional Quality and Sensory Acceptability of Shameta: A Traditional Cereal-Based Fermented Porridge for Lactating Mothers in Ethiopia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

The manuscript has improved a lot and meet the acceptance requirements of the Journal.

The quality of Enfligh also improved a lot after revising.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your positive consideration of our manuscript.

The quality of the language improved further, as indicated in the attached revised version. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

In my opinion, the manuscript entitled Effect of Fermentation Time and Blending Ratio on Microbial Dynamics, Nutritional Quality and Sensory Acceptability of  Shameta: A Traditional Cereal-Based Fermented Porridge for  Lactating Mothers in Ethiopia is an interesting one. The materials and methods are enough described, and the results are compared and discussed with the current state of the art.

I have some suggestions and comments as follows:

1.        Line 307, 305, 312 – please write Staphylococcus in italic; please check in the whole manuscript (Staphylococcus).

2.        Line 525, line 563, 615: All gross energy values recorded in the current study are more significant than gross – it is quite unusual to say more significant because there was not a statistical analysis of the authors, it was only a comparation. Therefore, please use a properly expression such as significantly different than….please also check in the whole manuscript.

3.        Line 539: the results of our study are in agreement and not The results in our study is in agreement.

4.        Line 552: as compared to the effect of the composition of ingredients of the product – please rephrase. The sentence is difficult to be understood formulate like this.

5.        Line 553: like that of Ca – please replace with: The same trend observed at Ca amount was observe at Fe and Zn…..

6.        Line 561, 603: Different letters in superscript along a column indicate a significant  difference (p<0.05), and the same letters indicate no significant difference (p>0.05). there is no need the say that and the same letters indicate no significant difference (p>0.05), because the meaning is already implied from the previous text. If different letters in superscript along a column indicate a significant difference, it can be deduced that the same letter indicate no significant difference.

7.        Line 626: please check reference 104. The brackets are different from other references.

8.        Line 627: with a lower and not with a low

9.        Lines 636-637: in addition to provide and not to providing.

10.  Please try to cut the extra zones of the picture, to better emphasize the samples and not the red table.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Moderate editing of English language required

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

Thank you for your critical and insightful professional comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the manuscript. All the comments are addressed well (highlighted yellow), and the language quality is further enhanced, as shown in the document I've attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study is meaningful for improving malnutrition condition among lactating mothers. The authors have done many experiments the study. However, Tables in the article are incomplete and non-standard, the discussion of experimental results needs to be improved. There are some careless mistakes that need to be corrected. Extraneous discourse and literature citations can be considered removed.

Comment 1: Line 34 can be changed to “… positive changes in …”.

Comment 2: Line 43-45 said “In addition to the fermentation process, the ingredients … also determine the safety …”. However, the previous text did not mention "the fermentation process determines the safety".

Comment 3: The meaning of the sentence in line 43-45 is not coherent. Please make it relevant to the context.

Comment 4: Line 49. May “live” should be changed into “living”.

Comment 5: Line 53. Why do you use “the under-nutrition” instead of “undernutrition” in line 51? I think they have the same meaning.

Comment 6: Paragraphs 2 (line 48-55) and 3 (line 52-62) can be combined into one paragraph. They all revealed that lactating mothers faced malnutrition.

Comment 7: Line 116. The percent sign after the "10" was missing.

Comment 8: Mistakes in Figure 1. “tape water” should be “tap water”. “1:30 hrs” may be “1.5 h”. There should be a comma between 0 and 8 (origin text: Secondary fermentation: Porridge fermentation for 0. 8, 10 and 12 days). And I suggest that add the word “ratio” in front of the ratio of the composite flours.

Comment 9: Please check whether it is necessary to add "s" after “composite flour”. Please check whether it is necessary to add a hyphen for the word physicochemical in Line 297. They were in two different forms in the whole text.

Comment 10: Line 312. “Eighth day”. Please unify the expressions of time.

Comment 11: The format of all the tables is not standard. Among them, Tables 1 and 2 showed incompleteness.

Comment 12: Line 307 and 328. “Table 5.1”, please revise them.

Comment 13: Line 339-341. The meaning of members of AMB needs to be put at the head of the paragraph.

Comment 14: Line 415-419. It needs to be discussed in more detail.

Comment 15: C1-4 can be marked in Figure 2.

Comment 16: Line 827. “3.4. Conclusion” should be “4. Conclusion”.

The language expression of professional terms in the article needs to be unified. Long sentences need to be split into two sentences to make them easier to understand.

Author Response

Response to reviewer 1 attached. 

Corrected manuscript Revision 1.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In my opinion, the manuscript entitled Fermentation Time and Blending Ratio on Microbial Dynamics, Nutritional Quality and Sensory Acceptability of Shameta:  A Traditional Cereal-Based Fermented Porridge for Lactating Mothers in Ethiopia by Kitessa is a good one, with an interesting topic. The introduction part provide enough information, the materials and methods must be improved, but the results and discussion are relevant, and compared with other studies.

I have some comments, as follows

1.     Line 21: blendingratio – please correct

2.     Line 96-97, please be more clear – fenugreek is a herb, not included in the category of spices. Please use a comma or try to rephrase the sentence.

3.     Line 100- utensils, please correct.

4.     Line 147- species such as fenugreek; please rephrase.

5.     The Latin scientific names must be written in italic: such as Nigella sativa, black cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum), white cumin (Cuminum cyminum), Trigonella foenum-graecum; please check it in the whole manuscript.

6.     Lines 208-210 – for the lactic acid determination, in the agar medium MRS there are several bacteria that could develop. From where authors did know that in MRS, after the inoculation and fermentation, only lactic acid bacteria are growth? They have a PCR analyse on the obtained plates?

7.     Lines 241-244 – please try to better explain the AAS method, so that the future readers could reproduce it. Considering that pH and TTA are simple and very known methods, you can try not to be so specific on describing it.

8.     With respect to the statistic analysis, if authors stated that Different letters in  superscript along a column indicate a significant difference (p<0.05), and the same letters indicate no significant difference (p>0.05), I understand that for instance, in the case of MBF1 sample, 0,8,10, 12 where the times used to evaluate the growth of LAB. That means that between 8.88 and 8.41 there are significant differences?

9.     Moreover, I am not able to understand why at table 2, when analysing the T.A. and pH authors had superscript letters from a-f if they analysed the values only in column?

10.  Line 459- more or less is not a scientific expression; please rephrase it.

11.  Figure to – please try to better present the samples; to cut the exterior of the photo and to edit the samples codification on the figure.

I think that the English quality is enough.

Author Response

Response to reviewer 2 attached. 

Corrected manuscript attached- revision 1

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Although the authors have revised to improve the overall quality of this manuscript, it still not acceptable at present version.  

The quality of English language is fair.

Reviewer 2 Report

In my opinion, the revised version of the manuscript Effect of Fermentation Time and Blending Ratio on Microbial Dynamics, Nutritional Quality and Sensory Acceptability of Shameta: A Traditional Cereal-Based Fermented Porridge for Lactating Mothers in Ethiopia still needs to be improved.

Authors did not give clear answer:

1.     Question: Lines 208-210 – for the lactic acid determination, in the agar medium MRS there are several bacteria that could develop. From where authors did know that in MRS, after the inoculation and fermentation, only lactic acid bacteria are growth? They have a PCR analyse on the obtained plates? 

Response: MRS is a selective media. It is designed to encourage the growth of the `lactic acid bacteria' which includes species of the genera of Lactobacillus, Streptococcus, Pediococcus, lactococcus and Leuconostoc. 

I totally agree with this affirmation, but my question is: how authors differentiated lactic acid bacteria from other bacteria that can grow in the same MRS medium? For instance, not all the Streptococcus strains are considered to be lactic acid bacteria. Did authors add some supplements on the MRS medium to encourage only the LAB development? Can you please also describe the general aspects of the identified LAB?

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Minor editing of English language required