Changes in Selected Quality Indices in Microbially Fermented Commercial Almond and Oat Drinks

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Manuscript ID: applsci-1943027

 

Comments to the Author

 

1.      What is the main point of fermented drinks? For human or animal? Because in the first sentence of abstract and introduction section are talk about animal food.

2.      Please give the information of almond and oat brand.

3.      How many grams of zinc powder added to solvents. Please mention.

4.      How to inoculate the microorganisms into the drinks. Because in Table 1 at initial stage, it contained both yeast and LAB strains. What the meaning of <10?

5.      Table 1, Please added the footnote under the table and “(48 h)” behind after fermentation”

6.      Due to the vary of initial concentration of microorganisms (Table 1), it seems that the results of acidic and viscosity are based on this concentration (Table 2). How to explain about this result?

7.      Section 3.5, the authors state that the highest volatile compounds was found in fermented drinks by K. marxianus, which was No.7, as 36/37 compounds and T. casei (No. 5) as 39 compounds, however, the data shown in Table 5 is C. lipolytica (No. 8) and L. plantarum (No. 2). Please check and correct.

8.      Please added footnote of Table 5 to indicate “+” symbol.

9.      Please use the same style of unit.

10.  Please check superscript and subscript.

 

11.  Figure 1, it should be added volatile compounds into figure and grouping with samples. This might be helpful to understanding how fermented drink correlated to each group of volatile compounds.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The findings of this study are valuable, however; a bit confusing as the author did mentioned about animal food in the beginning of abstract and introduction parts. In the mean time, the authors were more discussing on consumption of this plant-based beverages to vegan and human rather than discussed this topic related to animal food. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Yellow highlighted places have explanation in the text. I suggest you look carefully.

Regards,

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This manuscript provide a comprehensive data on oat and almond milk after fermentation. Some data especially, the fatty acid and volatile compound detected in this study will provide significant contribution to the scientific community.

However, there were some comments to improve the manuscript:

Abstract:

-          Line 19 - 21: The objective of this stud should be written in passive way.

-          Line 24 – 29: Result statement were too general. I would suggest the author to include the significant finding data in the abstract.

Introduction:

-          Line 97 – 104: Suggest the author to rephrase the objective statement. The author doesn’t need to mention all responses tested in the study in the objective.

Materials and methods:

-          What are the basis of the section of 8 strains? Please include in manuscript.

 

Result and discussion:

-          Line 222: where did the author get the value of carbohydrate and sugar? What sugar was the author referring to? Was it sucrose?

-          Line 223: what does author means by ‘positive premise’?

-          Line 231: Please check ‘initial density of their counts’ term. Please remove density and change to ‘initial count’.

-          Table 1: what was the first column (sample) referring to? Was it microbial strain? If yes, please change. Why there were values for yeast count (<10) for microbial strain 1 – 3? And value for LAB for strain 4 -8? Is there any reason author wrote it as <10? Why didn’t author write as ND (not detected)?

-          Table 1: Table have to stand alone, please include the fermentation condition.

-          Line 235 – 244: the discussions should reflect the result. The author should discuss the individual strain that give highest or lowest count.

-          Table 2: Title for Table 2 should be revised as it’s not clear. The author should mention the result were after 48 h fermentation.

-          What is control referring to in this study? Positive control? Negative control?

-          Table 3 & 4: Title for Table 3 & 4 should be revised as it’s not clear. The author should mention the result were after 48 h fermentation.

-          Is there any reason why author didn’t measure sugar consumption in this study?

 

Conclusions

-          This section is quite long. Suggest the author to simplify this section based on the objective.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your responses. 

Reviewer 4 Report

The author have addressed all comments and suggestions in this study.