Composition of Anthocyanins, Specific Sugars, and Organic Acids in Wild Edible Aromatic and Medicinal Vegetables

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors conducted a study on "Anthocyanins, Specific Sugars, and Organic Acids Compositions of Wild Edible Aromatic and Medicinal Vegetables", which has considerable significance and application potential. However, the article contains several issues that need to be addressed:

 

1.     Lines 52-53. The expression is confusing and unclear. The phrase "Alter the natural structure of foods" is particularly vague. Does it refer to nutritional components, sensory properties, or physical and chemical characteristics? Please clarify.

2.     The background requires further elaboration. As the focus is on the development of wild plants, it is necessary to introduce the context of the 12 studied plant species. Specifically, provide details on whether these plants are traditionally used as food in the local diet or valued for their potential bioactivity as medicinal resources.

3.     The authors should include relevant figures of the 12 species. Readers unfamiliar with these plants may benefit greatly from figure to better understand the context.

4.     Line 116. Information about the sampling location, including altitude, needs to be provided. Many plants show significant variation in chemical composition under different environmental conditions.

5.     Line 128. The citation format for "Assefa et al. (2019) [15]" is inconsistent. Similar issues are present throughout the manuscript. Revise the citation format.

6.     Line 131. Replace "2000 rpm" with g, as rpm depends on the specific centrifuge used, which could lead to confusion.

7.     Lines 138-139. The parameters of the HPLC instrument, including the manufacturer, column type, mobile phase composition, and gradient program, are not specified.

8.     141 The source of the commercial standards used for quantification needs to be stated. Include information such as the manufacturer and product details to enhance the transparency and reliability of the methodology.

9.     Line 148. What is the specific internal standard used? The authors should clearly state the compound and its source.

10.   The description of experimental details is overly general. Please provide more specific and comprehensive descriptions of the experimental setup, parameters, and procedures.

11.   How were the compounds identified? Was HPLC-MS used for this purpose? The methodology section does not mention HPLC-MS. If the identification relied solely on retention time, accurately identifying these anthocyanin components is inherently challenging.

12.   Line 160. What does the 33.99% represent? Is it a concentration, proportion, or relative content of a specific compound? This should be explicitly explained.

13.   Line 181. ‘There are studies on plants with green leaves such as lettuce [19,20], green 181 tea [21].’, lack details.

14.   Statistical values, such as SD or SE, should be included in tables to enhance data reliability.

15.   Lines 187-203. This section is a general description of anthocyanins and lacks a direct connection to the study. Move this content to the discussion section and integrate it with the study's findings.

16.   The discussion of results is superficial. Discussion should be a standalone section, delving deeply into the significance of the 12 studied wild species' anthocyanins, organic acids, and sugars. For example, consider exploring relationships like sugar-acid ratios, and compare the findings to similar wild edible species, such as Vaccinium duclouxii (Horticulture Research, uhad209), known for high anthocyanin, sugar, and acid contents.

17.   Some tables lack readability and could benefit from graphical representations.

18.   Reconstruct the discussion section to provide deeper insights into the findings. Avoid repeating well-known information about anthocyanins and instead focus on the unique contributions of the 12 studied species.

 

19.   Lines 297-306. This part is better suited for the discussion section rather than the conclusion, as it involves interpreting findings rather than summarizing the study.

Author Response

Our comments are in the attached document. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript reported the contents of anthocyanins, organic acids and free sugars in 12 different edible plants. However, there are several issues  need to be further discussed.

1 It is not surprising that the three types of phytochemical compounds show significant differences due to differences in metabolic pathways among plants from different genera. It would be seem to be more appealing to readers if these three types of components could be discussed in combination with edibility. For example, it reported that the contents of fructose and glucose are both quite high in these plants. Are the high sugars' contents likely to affect palatability?

2 The author focused on the content differences of organic acids related to the favor of plants. In fact, in terms of antioxidant activities, ferulic acid, chlorogenic acid and cinnamic acid may be more significant to human health. Unfortunately, these components were not determined in the manuscript.

3 The manuscript did not describe clearly the determination methods for the three types of phytochemical components. For example, the reference substances used for the determination of anthocyanins and organic acids, the chromatographic conditions for determining these compounds, and the internal standard for determining free sugars should be reported.

4 The usage of plant names in the manuscript is not standardized and unified. It is recommended that the abbreviation of the genus and the specific epithet were only written when plant names appeared for the second time.

5 Line 242, "the plants showed differences with the results of our" are incomplete.

6 Line 134, reference was cited twice.

      Can you include the specific content data of anthocyanins, organic acids, and free sugars in different edible plants in the article? From what perspectives can the article further explore the differences in different plant chemical components? What methods can be used to analyze the relationship between plant chemical components and edibility?

 

 

Author Response

Our comments are in the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript entitled „Anthocyanins, Specific Sugars and Organic Acids Compositions of Wild Edible Aromatic and Medicinal Vegetables“ presents the content analysis of some representative bioactive compounds in the leaves and other green parts of selected wild vegetables from Erzincan province, Turkey. The study is interesting because the investigated plant species are less common, but possibly useful for food or pharmaceutical purposes.

 

General concept comments:

The manuscript is generally well written and structured, the experimental design seems appropriate, but the presentation of the results is unclear, confusing and possibly misleading. The values presented as results in Tables 2, 3 and 4 should be appropriately explained in Materials & Methods section.

For example, in Table 2, the content of each anthocyanin is expressed in percent (%), but it isn’t clear is it percent of anthocyanin in dry extract, or in fresh plant material, or the percent of specific anthocyanin in the total amount of all quantified anthocyanins. Please elucidate this.

Table 3 – the content of organic acids is expressed in ng/μL, but μL of what? The procedure and calculation should be at least briefly explained.

Table 4 – the content of sugars is expressed in g per 100 g of what? Dry extract or fresh plant material, or something else? Especially the result for glucose of 104.80 g 100g^-1 sounds confusing. Please check and correct this.

Proper expression of results is crucial for understanding the value of experimental work but also for the discussion and comparison with similar studies. The expression of the results should be added in the caption or the footnote of the Tables to make them understandable without reading the whole text.

The references in the manuscript seem outdated, only few of them are from the last 5 years period. Some more recent studies should be added, and the discussion adequately rewritten.

Specific comments:

Line 176 – in this sentence the Table 2 should be written instead of Table 3.

Lines 229 – 230. The sentence is confusing, please rephrase it.

Author Response

Our comments are in the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has thoroughly addressed my questions, and I have no further concerns. However, I feel that certain parts of the response are overly detailed. My initial expectation was for the author to provide a concise overview or summary of the background for these 12 types, perhaps through grouped illustrations or brief descriptions. While the author has delivered an excellent and comprehensive background introduction, offering readers a clear understanding of the distribution and characteristics of these 12 types plants, If possible, the author should simplify the section 3.1. World distribution and morphological characteristics of wild edible plants. Moreover, Table 1; 2 should adopt the three-line table format, and the repeated "3.1" in 3.1. World distribution... and 3.1. Anthocyanin Contents.

Author Response

Review 1

Thank you for taking the time to review the manuscript. Your comments have greatly improved the manuscript.

The author has thoroughly addressed my questions, and I have no further concerns. However, I feel that certain parts of the response are overly detailed. My initial expectation was for the author to provide a concise overview or summary of the background for these 12 types, perhaps through grouped illustrations or brief descriptions.

We regret that we were unable to include images of wild edible plants. In the future, we will collect better quality images.

While the author has delivered an excellent and comprehensive background introduction, offering readers a clear understanding of the distribution and characteristics of these 12 types plants, If possible, the author should simplify the section 3.1. World distribution and morphological characteristics of wild edible plants.

Thank you very much for your suggestion. In order to simplify section 3.1, we opted to incorporate the World Geographic Distribution of Plant Species into new table (Table 2). The overall morphological characterization of plants is included in Table S1 as supplemental material. I hope you will find this kind of organized section suitable.

 Moreover, Table 1; 2 should adopt the three-line table format, and the repeated "3.1" in 3.1. World distribution... and 3.1. Anthocyanin Contents.

Thank you very much for your suggestion. We corrected it!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf