Toward Sustainable Ready-to-Eat Salads: Integrating Substrate Management and Eco-Friendly Packaging in Wild Rocket Production

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall, the manuscript requires improvements before it can be considered for publication. In particular, the Discussion section needs to be strengthened with deeper interpretation of the results and better support from relevant scientific literature. In addition, the statistical analysis should be revised to ensure consistency with the experimental design described in the Materials and Methods section. The quality and clarity of the figures and graphs also need to be improved. More detailed and specific comments are provided below.

Lines 136–140: The description in this section is unclear. I recommend improving the clarity of the text and considering the inclusion of a schematic figure or flowchart to better illustrate the described process;

Line 158: The expression presented in this line should be formatted and presented as an equation;

Line 174: The description in this section should be improved. Please clarify whether a calibration curve was performed and provide the corresponding details, if applicable;

Line 186: The description of the method should be improved to ensure clarity and reproducibility. Please specify the reagents used and the sample volume analyzed;

Line 202: The mean comparison test does not appear to follow a factorial approach;

Line 209, reference [29]: Please specify the value reported in the literature;

 Line 279: Please reinforce the desired balance or explicitly indicate the result being referred to;

Lines 406–408: This is an interesting statement and could be incorporated into the Conclusion section;

Lines 455–457: Please specify and clarify this hypothesis;

Lines 458–464: Is this behavior justifiable? The text is overly interpretative and lacks a proper discussion of the observed trend. This issue occurs at several points throughout the manuscript;

Line 520: The conclusions should be more direct and focused on the main results, avoiding justifications or extended explanations.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript (Horticulturae-4060982) reported the substrate management and eco-friendly packaging in wild rocket production. The overall quality of manuscript is fine. However, the following major issues are still required to be addressed and improved by the authors. The manuscript would benefit greatly by adding some figures to enhance clarity and help the readers to visualize the key findings. Moreover, the writing styles, spelling, and grammatical errors should be checked to improve the Language quality of the manuscript.

1. Too many keywords: Just highlight and use only the most important keywords to support the findings of the current manuscript.
2. Line 99: Using “unheated greenhouse” is not appropriate. Consider to replace with another words or change the statement properly.
3. It would be beneficial to the readers by making a figure that includes a time frame from sowing date until harvest or postharvest. (By adding transplanting date, nutrient application date, harvest, etc.)
4. The quality of Table 1 is low and unclear. It would be beneficial by presenting as a table (not a screenshot picture or adding as a figure).
5. Table 1, Mg and Mn contents in CP are not detectable? Rephrase using as non-detectable instead of using hyphen. Refers to previous publications.
6. Line 122: Unclear statement, “Ten plants replication (n = 6)”. Each replicates includes ten plants and six replicates were used for each treatment?
7. The manuscript has no figures of any plants and provide the plant figures. Therefore, the readers can consider how the treatments affected on plant growth.
8. Line 131, Rephrase “approximately 100 g of sample”.
9. The quality and resolution of all figures should be improved.
10. The writing styles, spelling, and grammatical errors should be checked to improve the Language quality of the manuscript.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The writing styles, spelling, and grammatical errors should be checked to improve the Language quality of the manuscript.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The revised manuscript can be accepted in its current form.

Thanks.