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Peer-Review Record

Application of Azolla spp. as a Growing Medium Component for Melon Grown in a Soilless Culture System

Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(18), 10288; https://doi.org/10.3390/app131810288

by Warin Intana¹, Thanet Khomphet^1,*

, Naramit Srichai¹, Nattawadee Bundit¹ and Shams Shaila Islam²

Reviewer 1:

Vijay Rakesh Reddy Sanikommu

Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Reviewer 3:

Halil Demir

Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(18), 10288; https://doi.org/10.3390/app131810288

Submission received: 17 August 2023 / Revised: 13 September 2023 / Accepted: 13 September 2023 / Published: 14 September 2023

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Chemical and Functional Properties of Food and Natural Products)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript has 25 % similarity index indicating significant amounts of plagiarised content (report attached). The authors are instructed to reduce it as it would create copy right issues for the authors as well as MDPI publishers in future.

The objective of this experiment is well described, planned and executed. However, the material and methods section need to be elaborated for clarity to the readers. Certain parameters like organic matter and mineral estimation should be explained here. authors used statistical tools like F-test, boxplot which need to be incorporated in the data analysis section. To improvise the manuscript, it is requested to address the following points

· Whether the organic matter were tested on dry weight basis? Elaborate the procedure in the materials and method section

· Table 1: whether the values mean of replicates?

· Table 2: MSTr and MSe are first appearing in the table. Hence it should be cited and explained in the data analysis section

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

We are thankful to the reviewer for comments on the manuscript. We have carefully addressed your concerns and made corresponding revisions according to your advice. The following are the answers we have made in response to the reviewer’s comments:

Ans: We appreciate your thorough review of our paper. QuillBot, a paraphrasing tool, was used to reduce the similarity throughout the manuscript.

Ans: We have addressed those points in the manuscript as a reviewer comment.

Whether the organic matter were tested on dry weight basis? Elaborate the procedure in the materials and method section.

Ans: We followed the protocol of Motsara and Roy [12].

Table 1: whether the values mean of replicates?

Table 2: MSTr and MSe are first appearing in the table. Hence it should be cited and explained in the data analysis section.

Ans: Thanks for the recommendation, in this experiment, we emphasize the fruit traits of melon. In table 2, it is related to the agronomic traits of melons. We just need to show the similarity between the traits under different Azolla treatments.

Best regard

Thanet Khomphet

Reviewer 2 Report

In the manuscript, the authors assessed the feasibility of using Azolla as a growing media component for melon grown in a soilless culture system and found that fermented and fresh Azolla were recommended for melon production. In general, the data are clean and convincing, and the results are organized in a logic way. There are still some minor points needs to be addressed. Details are listed below.

1. There should be a comma before etc in line 49;

2. The format for reference 12 in line 98 was not suitable.

3. The table name in line 170 should be in center.

4. There was no figure legends for figure 1e in line 202.

5. The figure legend for figure 2 was not written well.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

There should be a comma before etc in line 49;