Impact of Inorganic Metal (Ag, Cu) Nanoparticles on the Quality of Seeds and Dried Rapeseed Sprouts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review remarks on manuscript number: agriculture-1492597 entitled “Impact of metal nanocolloids and the process of drying on the quality of rapeseed sprouts submitted by Kachel et al. Subject is quite interesting, results are good, however, authors fail to support times and find a gap of research in introduction. The article needs rigorous internal review; especially for quality presentation. Moreover, the correct use of the abbreviation is missing; authors should carefully check, the total duration rape in the soil medium should be added. Does applying NPK fertilizers, foliar spray of BORMAX, and herbicidal have any interference with NPs effects? The purpose of drying on the sprouts is not clear? In the abstract; it is not clear ‘how many years the authors conducted this experiment? Pls, rewrite. Some tables should be shifted as supplementary.  

Author Response

Please check the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed most of the Reviewer comments, however, there are still aspects that need to be corrected and improved.

It is not clear why the authors have not deleted the part in Methods where it is stated “The average size of AgNP an CuNP nanoparticles and the statistical distribution of their sizes…” (lines 158-160) if they stated in their response letter that: “We thank the Reviewer for this comment and will aim to include such information in our next publication. Our goal in this study was only to confirm the presence of nanoparticles in the purchased solution and we did not analyze their sizes.”

Line 156, “ark field mode” has not been corrected to “dark field mode”.

Lines 158, 162, 178, 325, 326 and other places, after the acronym NP there is no need to write “nanoparticles” or write “silver nanoparticles” if AgNP have already been defined previously. The usage of AgNP and CuNP should be consistent throughout the text.

Figure 1 and text in lines 165-169 are results and should not be in the Methods section. The same applies to Figure 2 and text in lines 173-178. I see that the authors might have misinterpreted the previous comment I made regarding one sentence (or part of a sentence) which should have been described in the Methods section. However, the results should still be in the Results section. The methods used to obtain the results shown in Figures 1 and 2 should be described in the Methods section.

Line 260, there is a period missing in the end of the sentence.

Line 259, the format of the reference is incorrect.

As mentioned previously, the title of section 2.9. could be clearer and state what samples were used to make extracts, e.g., “extracts of rape sprouts”?

Line 246, specify, what was the sample and how much of it was used for extraction. It is not clear what “agitated 3 x 30 min” means. What was done between the three sets of 30 minutes? In addition, this description appears to repeat what was already stated in section 2.7. Can sections 2.7. and 2.9. be combined because they seem to be partially overlapping?

In the title of section 3.2., replace “treatment” with “content”.

Line 422, change “nanoparticle” to “nanoparticles”.

I suggest the authors to include more recent references. NP effects on plants are an active research area, thus the results of the paper should be put in the context of the state-of-the-art of science in this field (i.e., papers published within the past 5 years). Currently, the authors have cited only one reference which was published within the past 5 years. All other references are much older.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The current version of the improved significantly, the authors addressed all the remarks raised by the reviewer. The paper can be accepted for publication. 

Author Response

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This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Reviewer remarks on the manuscript entitled “Impact of metal nanocolloids and the process of drying on the quality of rapeseed sprouts submitted by Magdalena Kachel. The manuscript is quite interesting and has new dimensions of research. However, the following remarks can be addressed before further process.

Remarks as follows:

What do the authors mean by “Nanocolloids”. Should be explained in the Material and Method section. However, in some places authors used nanoparticles. Line 26 MTS should be explained. There are a lot of grammatical errors or typos such as Line 56 sawn and several sentences are too long, hard to get the clear point. Authors should carefully check and rewrite sentences. The first paragraph of the introduction does not reflect the relevance and justify the title.  Authors should provide an overview of these NPs application, production, relevance, and concern, and the need for preservation of nutritional values especially selected sprouts. Authors may use these reports: DOI: 10.3390/biology10070666; DOI: 10.3390/plants10071317; DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.132167. What was the particle size of used NPs, details regarding the product should be added? Do authors estimate nanocolloidal solutions DLS and ZETA potential activities? I believe authors should use abbreviation on nanoparticles. qualitative identification and characterization of NPs should be shifted to the material and method section as this is not result of the present finding. Authors use commercialized NPs. Results seems repetition of table values: in-text authors could write comparative results in case of folds increased/decreases. The symbols presented for degree centigrade is incorrect, pls add correct throughout the manuscript. Table 2 SE is 0.01 in most cases, pls check. There are many tables: Can authors add any of them as supplementary? The conclusion must be concise and clearly add the future application of work.    

Reviewer 2 Report

The study by Kachel et al. used two commercial nanocolloid products (Ag and Cu-based nanocolloids) to study the spraying effect on rapeseed mass and nutritional value as well as the color of rapeseed sprouts. Unfortunately the manuscript does not meet the minimum criteria of a scientific publication. The methods have not been described at a sufficient detail and are not ordered logically for the reviewer to understand what was done. It is unclear at what point of the plant growth process the spraying was done with nanocolloids, and at what stage and which plant parts were harvested. The analysis of sprouts has not been mentioned until the Results section which is confusing. The nanocolloids have not been characterized for the size of nanoparticles (pristine and hydrodynamic) or the dissolution (what was the level of Ag and Cu ions in the colloid solutions?). The data in the tables does not conform with the data described in the text. Statistical analysis results are unclear (what do the letters signify at the measured values in the tables?). The results are presented as one continuous section without introduction of each experimental part or subtitles of separate experiments and in a most confusing way. The cited references are not correct. Either it is a numbering problem or something else, but it was not possible to check if suitable papers were cited at appropriate sentences. Conclusions are missing. It is unclear what the results of the study can be used for, why are they important and what do they suggest. I have attached annotated pdf of the manuscript with some more specific comments.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf