Effects of Ethylene and 1-Methylcyclopropene on the Quality of Sweet Potato Roots during Storage: A Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

While this review offers some useful insights for professionals and students working with sweet potato crops, it could benefit from greater depth. Table 1 is particularly informative, and the presentation is excellent. However, Figure 1 is mainly (just) illustrative and could be improved by specifying the effects of Ethylene and 1-MCP on the quality-related properties discussed in the paper (5.1 to 5.4). And the ellipses shoud be removed.

Author Response

Thank you for your review of our paper. We have answered each of your points below.

• RESPONSE: We sincerely appreciate your insightful comments and suggestions for revising the manuscript. Deterioration in postharvest quality of sweet potato roots can be attributed to sprout growth, postharvest wounding, microbial attack and loss of nutritional properties. Sprouting control, disease resistance, wound healing, and nutritional properties are all important quality-related parameters. Sweet potato roots with sprouting, injuries, or infections are considered of poor quality, even if the nutritional quality is great. We corrected the ‘quality-related properties’ with ‘nutritional properties’ in Figure 1 of the revised manuscript. The explanation of quality-related properties was also modified in the ‘Introduction’ part to make it more clearly described to the readers.

Reviewer 2 Report

The submitted manuscript deals with the application of ethylene and 1-methylcyclopropene for regulating the postharvest storage of potatoes. The review is relevant in the field of the journal with interesting outcomes, and important quality parameters like sprouting control, disease resistance, wound healing and nutritional properties have been discussed.

The introduction is not properly scripted with short irrelevant statements and definitions, presents flaws in terms of sequence and logic in the presentation of topics in each paragraph. Introduction lacks state of the art applied in the field regarding ethylene and 1-methylcyclopropene, and the manuscript should further discuss the advantages and disadvantages of ethylene and 1-methylcyclopropene in contrast to conventional technologies.

The introduction section of the manuscript is intended to frame the study against the main objectives, but this has not been achieved. I recommend a rewrite accompanied by a review of the text that should contain the ideas that the authors want the reader to capture when reading the manuscript. For example, the importance of maintaining postharvest quality of potatoes during storage and the challenges associated with potato quality should be introduced from the beginning and clearly articulated. Thereafter, the authors can discuss the conventional methods employed for ensuring potato quality during storage, and their associated challenges with appropriate citations that warrants the use of ethylene and 1-methylcyclopropene. The importance of ethylene and 1-methylcyclopropene and a few related studies can then be summarized, and the novelty of the review adequately and appropriately articulated.

Language is also a major issue in many parts of the manuscript with lots of grammatical errors and singular/plural tense agreement. Majority of the sentences are short and disconnected, while others are too long with poor structural connect, making reading and comprehension very difficult. Revise the entire manuscript for language and grammar.

Another concern over this review is that while this review is about application of ethylene and 1-methylcyclopropene, there is not a dedicated section to discuss the mechanism of action of ethylene and 1-methylcyclopropene and how they are applied (with different parameters, or combined with other processing techniques) to regulate postharvest quality of potatoes during storage. The introduction is too simple to provide such information.

The most important drawback of the study is that it lacks thorough discussion of its results, and thus, lacks sufficiency for publication. The discussions could include more comparisons with the results of relevant studies in the literature. Section 2 to 5 of the manuscript requires substantial rewriting. Each section is just a simple summary, and the different sections of this articles seem to be quite separate from each other without strong links. The logic of the whole review is not shown and this makes the value of this article low. There is a fine line difference between a summary and review. If the narration follows the style of xxxx et al. did this and that and yyyy et al. reported that and this, this style could more qualify to be of a summary. On the other hand, highlighting the science of a particular research report, with appropriate citation, could bring out the salient research outcome. Unfortunately, the description and narration style adopted in this submission qualifies to be more of a summary finding encountered in the literature than a useful research review that the reader envisions for the article to be useful and a guiding tool for future research. Thus, authors are highly advised to thoroughly read/refer to proper review articles published by eminent scholars than relying on many summaries floating around in the name of review publications.

Other suggestions include for example that the paper could discuss further the role of ethylene and 1-methylcyclopropene and their agri-food innovative issues in the post-pandemic food sector. The conclusion section is intended to summarize the findings of the review, but the conclusion and future perspective section is very empty. There should be real conclusions from the studies in this area summarised and appropriate future perspectives should be provided.

Author Response

Thank you for your review of our paper. We have answered each of your points below.

• RESPONSE: We sincerely appreciate your insightful comments and suggestions for revising the manuscript. As you suggested, we have rewritten the ‘Introduction’ part to elaborate on the application and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of ethylene and 1-MCP compared to conventional technologies. As you suggested, we have reorganized the ‘Introduction’ part of the revised manuscript. At the end of the first paragraph, we stated the importance of maintaining the postharvest quality of sweet potatoes during storage. In the following paragraph, we described the challenges associated with sweet potato quality in more detail. After that, in the third paragraph, we discussed the conventional methods employed for ensuring sweet potato quality during storage and their associated challenges with appropriate citations that warrant the use of ethylene and 1-MCP. In the following two paragraphs, we stated the importance of ethylene and 1-MCP and summarized the related studies, the mechanism of action of ethylene and 1-MCP and how they are applied were also summarized in the ‘Introduction’ part and discussed separately in the following sections2-5. In sections 2 to 5, we added a discussion paragraph or sentences for each section, and have rewritten the majority of the content. The conclusion section was also rewritten by us to summarize the findings and provide future perspectives.

Reviewer 3 Report

The review addresses an important topic, given that sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) is an edible tuber rich in sugars, slow digestible/resistant starch, vitamins, mineral and bioactive compounds. It is the sixth most important food crop worldwide, produced in a millionaire global market. The preservation of sweet potato quality during storage faces some challenges due to the physiological, physical and chemical changes it goes through in postharvest, the control of these changes is crucial to have a  final acceptable product in the market; to achieve this purpose, the application of ethylene and 1-MCP could be a feasible technological approach.

Regarding the manuscript, it was expected the reviewed information would be very focus on sweet potato quality characteristics along the document. However, there was a mixture of factors influencing quality, quality attributes and physiological and quality changes during storage (shelf-life).

It is recommended to approach all the sections with a focus on the influence of ethylene and 1-MCP on quality, then the document could begin by defining the quality of sweet potato, the attributes that it includes and the factors that influence said quality characteristics, especially during storage; to then develop the sections on the effect that the application of ethylene and 1-MCP has on these aspects. It is considered that, in general, the document contains the proper information but it should be rearranged and somehow change its focus.

I have made some comments on the document and wrote some other in the attached file, hoping them will be useful to improve the minireview.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your review of our paper. We have answered each of your points below.

• RESPONSE: We sincerely appreciate your insightful comments and suggestions for revising the manuscript. Deterioration in the postharvest quality of sweet potato roots can be attributed to sprout growth, postharvest wounding, microbial attack, and loss of nutritional properties. Sprouting control, disease resistance, wound healing, and nutritional properties are all important quality-related parameters. Sweet potato roots with sprouting, injuries, or infections are considered of poor quality, even if the nutritional quality is great. We corrected the ‘quality-related properties’ with ‘nutritional properties’ in Figure 1 of the revised manuscript. The explanation of quality-related properties was also modified in the ‘Introduction’ part to make it more clearly described to the readers. As you suggested in the attached file, we corrected the conclusion in ‘Abstract’, replaced the ‘Keywords’ to avoid repeating in the title, and rewritten the ‘Introduction’ and ‘Conclusions‘ parts in the revised manuscript.

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript is a review regarding the effects of ethylene and 1-methylcyclopropene on the quality of sweet potato roots during storage.

The manuscript is interesting. Nevertheless, the topics must be better linked and the authors should improve the manuscript regarding the effects of ethylene and 1-methylcyclopropene on the quality of sweet potato roots, since this part is not fully clarified and it is the core of the manuscript. All the effects on weight loss, respiration rate, sugar content, and phenolic compounds must also be better highlighted. The advantages and disadvantages must be presented in more detail rather than showing a compilation of different studies and pointing out some directions in the conclusion section.

The English language must be also revised.

Please separate values from units, i.e. “24 h” not “24h”.

Please use “ºC” for the temperature unit.

References- Please format the scientific names in italic.

Author Response

Thank you for your review of our paper. We have answered each of your points below.

• RESPONSE: We sincerely appreciate your insightful comments and suggestions for revising the manuscript. Deterioration in the postharvest quality of sweet potato roots can be attributed to sprout growth, postharvest wounding, microbial attack, and loss of nutritional properties. Sprouting control, disease resistance, wound healing, and nutritional properties are all important quality-related parameters. Sweet potato roots with sprouting, injuries, or infections are considered of poor quality, even if the nutritional quality is great. We corrected the ‘quality-related properties’ with ‘nutritional properties’ in Figure 1 of the revised manuscript. The explanation of quality-related properties was also modified in the ‘Introduction’ part to make it more clearly described to the readers. As you suggested, the advantages and disadvantages were presented in detail in ‘Sections 2-5’, and the ‘Conclusion’ section was rewritten to point out some directions. We corrected the language, units, and ‘References’ in the revised manuscript.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The corrected paper is much better. I believe it is ready to be published.
Only the words "Ethylene; 1-methylcyclopropene" are in the title and are repeated in the keywords.

Author Response

We sincerely appreciate your insightful comments and suggestions for revising the manuscript. As you suggested, we have deleted ‘ethylene’ and ‘1-MCP’ in the keywords of the revised manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report

The comments made in the last review were answered. I only found the introduction and the conclusions and perspectives too long, I think they can be reduced. Finally, I placed a couple of comments on the document.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We sincerely appreciate your insightful comments and suggestions for revising the manuscript. As you suggested, we have rewritten the sentence ‘On the other hand, fungicide usually applied in industrial operation after harvest to delivering the highest quality product to consumers.’ by ‘On the other hand, fungicide usually applied in industrial operation after harvest to improve the root qualities.’ in highlight. We have corrected the ‘nutritional properties’ back to ‘quality-related properties’ in Figure 1, Table 1 and Line 279 to Line 288 in the highlight of the revised manuscript.

Reviewer 4 Report

accept

Author Response

We sincerely appreciate your insightful comments and suggestions for revising the manuscript.