Screening and Identification of the Strain Pediococcus acidilactici and Its Application in Fermentation of Corn–Soybean Meal Uncooked Materials
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
Dear Authors
The quality of the writing of the article “Screening and Identifying of the Strain of Pediococcus acidilactici and Its Application in Fermentation of Corn-Soybean Meal Uncooked Materials” is very poor and the methodology and results need to be rethought in order to understand the contribution of the research:
1. The introduction substantially improved
2. It is necessary to review the results and discussion
When the Results and Discussion are presented separately, the Results section should contain exclusively the description of the data obtained in the research. While the Discussion section, involves commenting on the data obtained, some details of why they were obtained and comparison with other research.
3. The Conclusions section should describe if the objective has been achieved, as well as the main contribution of this investigation.
4. In the Methodology: describe the brand of culture media used
5. Line 113 Saccharomyces cerevisiaeY-06 should be Saccharomyces cerevisiae Y-06
6. Line 134 196, 197: “GB/T 16291.1-2012 General Guidelines for the Selection, Training and Management of Evaluators in Sensory Analysis Part 1: Selecting Evaluators” is a book? why is it not cited in the bibliography?
a. what type of sensory evaluation has been performed
7. The Figure 1: is not necessary, it does not provide any relevant information. You have not identified a new microorganism
8. Line 603: 35.74%(p<0.05), please separate
9. Line 749: Flora is an incorrect term, change to biota
1. Line 774: Pollution is an incorrect term, change to contamination
1. Adapt the format of the bibliography
Kind regards
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
The manuscript is significantly improved however there are a few minor issues as follows:
Line 21, what do you mean by "system" here?
In the keywords, you need to simplify the words as keywords, so please change " uncooked raw material fermentation,.....). Also change "separating and identifying" please don't use "and" another issue this is general word separating or identifying of what?
Line 88, feeds in place of "feed"
Line 90, please provide some examples of the anti-nutritional factors and add a suitable reference.
Line 94, please add a suitable reference after the word significantly.
Line 95, compared to what? e.g., the unfermented soybean meal!
Line 97, nutritional in place of "nutrition".
Line 114, please include the affiliation of the college of food sciences.
in the statics, please add the number of the statistical repetitions (n=.....) used in the experimental parameters.
please add the significance values in the results part for each parameter if it was significant (e.g., P<0.0X).
May you don't have to include Figure 2. 16S rRNA gene sequence of SLB-04 strain of Pediococcus acidilactici.
Table 6, 7are these values means ± SD or means ± SE? please clarify this in the title of the table.
In all figures, what are a, b, and c refer to?
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
1.Further clarification of the research background better.
2. Line 585: After fermentation, the probiotic bacteria increased in the fermentation product, thus enhancing the characteristics of the feed. This conclusion should be reflected in the article.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report (New Reviewer)
The article is devoted to the fermentative improvement of the content of uncooked raw soybean meal-maize intended for pig feed. Unfortunately, even if it contains meaningful results, the manuscript is very clumsily written and difficult to read in this form. A severe revision by a competent colleague could help improve it, otherwise, it cannot be accepted.
Abstract: line 20 - Saccharomyces are yeasts; it is more correct to call them that here.
Line 41: incorrect citation, correct is "between 1:1.5 to..."
Line 49: "low water activity" - please edit.
Lines 55, 58 - authors are cited in the text as "Ping et al." [14], ...
Line 85: citation: https://doi.org/10.3390/pr9010114
Line 114 - give the city and state of the college, capitalize it, as well as the title of line 119.
Line 120: "de man" to become de Man,
2.3.2.2 - to delete the whole paragraph, and "Berger" is Bergey!
Lines 171-172 - seem redundant (where did they come from!)
Table 1 - all words from the first column should be in capital letters, "contaminated with bacteria
or not" is redundant, change it to "contamination",
Table 2 - "%" should be put in parentheses, not after a slash,
Line 233 - messed up the sub-chapter numbering, in general, reduce the subdivision and remove it where possible,
Line 352: "Dongxiao Du et al. isolated and identified two strains of Pediococcus acidilactici from soil" is unnecessary. Many people have isolated pediococci from many places, there is no need to mention this particular scientist.
Figure 2 is unnecessary. You can deposit the sequence in the NCBI database and give the number here instead of the figure.
Figure 3 and Figure 4 - select one and remove the other.
The results are too detailed, and much of it contains redundant descriptions of the conditions required for the cultivation of the various types of bacteria and yeast, which are clear to anyone involved in microbiology. There is a large amount of discussion in the results, and these passages should be moved to the Discussion section.
The Reference list does not conform to the style of the journal.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 4 Report (New Reviewer)
The paper is substantially improved.
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
1. Introduction: As such professional background knowledge is not yet familiar, but from the overall perspective, the logic of this article structure is acceptable, and the narrative is complete. A) Line 39: Please indent the first line.
b) Line 79: This paragraph lacks a follow-on sentence and does not connect with the end. Please add the specific advantages or characteristics of using these materials that can change a practical problem and improve the meaning of the paragraph.
2. Materials and Methods
a) Line 105: The “Mathods” should be “Methods”, the word here is spelling errors.
b) Line 107~Line 118: Is there a reference method for "Screening of high yield lactic acid bacteria strains"? If so, please indicate.
c) Line 108~Line 112: The “20mL” there are writing formatting errors, there should Space between numbers and letters. Please note the English writing convention in this paragraph and in the following.
How can 9 g NaCl/L be expressed in such a way? It should be configured for the use of NaCl to a concentration of 9g/L.
d) Line 109: What kind of gradient is "gradient dilution"? Please specify.
e) Line 115: "24h" is confirmed to be incubation?
f) Line 116: How many times is "repeat again" repeated? Please indicate.
g) Line 116~Line 117: "lactic acid detection kit" should be labeled with the source of the kit.
h) Line 119: The title should not be labeled as a citation, but should be placed in a specific paragraph, please correct.
i) Line 121~Line 122: Is "microscopic morphology observation" the equipment used?
j) Line 126: Is it "16.S rDNA" or "16S rDNA"? Please be consistent with the terminology.
k) Line 142~Line 143: Corn meal: Soybean meal 142 =3:1(m/m), 20g/sample, please double check whether the expression “m/m” is appropriate, usually "w/w" is used to express the weight ratio, and the expression of “20g/samples” I’m not sure it’s appropriate.
l) Line 147~Line 148: Is the content of each of the three strains 5%? Please clarify.
m) Line 163: "Sensory evaluation" is a specific evaluation based on criteria such as training, male/female ratio, etc.
n) Line 171: Please double-check the “m/m” statement for accuracy.
o) Line 176: What is the pH adjustment?
p) Line 194: How is "the second stage the fermentation substrate" prepared? Or is the material from the first stage of optimal fermentation used as substrate for the second stage of fermentation?
q) Line 197: "the protein content" is labeled with the source of the measurement method, is this indicator a landmark indicator after fermentation? Since we want to replace antibiotics, should we consider amino nitrogen or peptides as indicators?
r) Line 218: "Determination of protein content in raw materials" Please write in a concise form.
s) Line 244~Line 247: The test method should be described specifically.
t) Line 249~Line 252: There should add the details of the country where the software is used, refer to the standard expression "SPSS 19.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, USA)". Please be precise and concise.
3. Results section
a) Line 253: The theoretical analysis of all experimental results is not supported enough by the literature, and there is a lack of comparison with similar research results.
b) Line 287: Please align the order in the table, some of the headings are misaligned at the top and bottom, please use centering or left alignment.
c) Line 273 and Line 293: Please standardize the presentation, whether it is "Fig xx" or "Figure xx", and please revise the rest of the text.
d) Line 346: Please state the meaning of significance at the bottom of the table. For example, "Note: Different letters mean significant differences (P < 0.05).”. In addition, there are similar problems in some graphs in the article, please correct them one by one, as in Figure 6.
e) Line 369~Line 370: "8% was the optimal inoculation size" is missing the source of the theoretical analysis and the comparison with similar studies.
4. Discussion section
a) Line 549: "increased by 5.71" Is it caused by the addition of the strain?
b) Line 553: "essential amino acids were detected out” There’s no amino acid detection data in the article
5. Conclusion
a) Line 585: After fermentation, the probiotic bacteria increased in the fermentation product, thus enhancing the characteristics of the feed. This conclusion should be reflected in the article.
b) Line 593: Here "3.8:6.2" and "℃" are in Song format, please change them to correct format.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.docx
Author Response
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript provides some scientific potential, however many issues have to be addressed. In the introduction, you have to insert the reason for using soybean meal, this is the most expensive part of animal diets in many countries, it is used basically as a source of protein, so you have to insert information about the protein contents after the fermentation, and which animal it can be used for and which stage of life. Some information in the part of material and methods are missing, some sentences also need English scientific editing. Neither the significance degree nor the SEM was inserted in some tables, the number of the analytical and statistical repetitions was not inserted, and the (P= xxx) values have also to be inserted in the part of the results, tables, and abstract also.
Line 11, which acidified fruit juice, please specify.
Line 13, please insert the ratio of the combination.
You need to insert the P value (P=XXX) of the results part in the abstract.
Line 24, emission reduction of what? what were the tested parameters to suggest that?
Line 35, please replace "feed" with "animal diets".
Lien39, this sentence needs English editing. please insert the main difference between these types (SmF and SSF).
Line 45, you needed a suitable reference here.
Line 52, the nutritional value increased, what were the criteria to confirm the improvement? what about the protein or fiber contents? such information is needed to be inserted to show the advantages of fermented feeds.
In lines 56 and 57 it seems that these sentence needs to be linked with the previous one.
Line 72, what about the feeds for other animals, the fermented diets also can provide some advantages for other livestock animals.
Line 92, please insert the code of Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Line 92, which lab?
Line 103, please remove inserting words like "please", please modify this sentence.
Line 107, again which juice?
Line 112, a specified time has to be inserted not 2 -3 days!
Line 116, please insert the manufactured company, county, and city of this kit.
Line 142, you have to provide the full chemical composition of the soybean meal.
Line 143 is the 20g/sample was based on dry matter, is this 20g dried or what?
Line 174, please insert the CFU for these strains.
Line 152, inoculated again in which concentration?
Line 249, This was repeated three times for each sample and averaged?? What was this? I guess you need to insert the number of analytical repetitions you did.
Line 252, at which degree of significance?
Table 6, what are these letters mean? insert them under the table.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors
The quality of the writing of the article “Screening and Identifying of the Strain of Pediococcus acidilactici and Its Application in Fermentation of Corn-Soybean Meal Uncooked Materials” is very poor and the methodology and results need to be rethought in order to understand the contribution of the research.
The introduction does not show the important background of the research topic.
Not all tables are necessary.
The figures are very small in size, making them difficult to read, and there is no justification for so many of them.
In the conclusion, the authors show the results and discuss them, but the conclusion of the research is not clear.
Kind regards
