Effect of Storage Conditions on Freshness Indexes and Mold Count of Fishmeal

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Author,

Congratulations by manuscript. All my comments are in the text.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please refer to the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, 

We are including some sugestions and questions for your manuscript which we hope you can accept and clarify: 

Abstract: 1^st paragraph needs rephrasing as it is confused and with repetitive.

Manuscript: General suggestion: thorough revision of English as some sentences are confusing and seem unfinished.

 

Introduction:

Line 38 (reference missing)

Line 43 (reference missing)

Line 44 … Please clarify if you tasted the fishmeal or if you are referring to smell?

Line 47 to 50 – Please rephrase and add a reference

Line 52-53 and further in text – National ? Please give the complete reference of standards. Are standards available?

Line 57 – Phrase seems incomplete.

Line 58 – detection method (of what?)

Line 64 – Palatability – again did you tasted? Is this a reference? Which one?

Line 82 and line 85 – Please do not use the word significance as it is related with a statistical meaning which is not the case in this sentence.

Line 89 to 94 – Please explain what is GRA and include a reference, and what is TOPSIS and include a reference as readers may not be aware of the usefulness of these methods and though they are frequent in engineering and management they are not common in food freshness evaluations.

Line 100 – ratio

Line 104 – Please include reference for agars. MgO???

 

Methods:

Please consider that sampling is not clear for all the analysis. It seems (from figures) that there were different sampling times.

Line 123 – How do you know average temperature in China? Reference?

 

Line 161 to 169 – Did the authors found only moulds or yeasts as well? Please explain if antibiotics were added to media for bacterial inhibition.

 

Results and discussion:

Line 207 – 16 of storage – scale of figures is not according to text so it is difficult to understand.

Line 209 – What is the definition of superfresh? We do not agree with these statement.

Line 218 – Figures a) and b) Make larger figures and join a) and b) and change scale.

 

Line 255 – Reference needed.

 

Line 269 – Make larger figures and change scale.

 

Line 280 – “GRA greater than 0,8”. Please explain the basis for this value or give a reference.

Line 282 – Reference 28 is for a study on the effect of CO on eggs but it is not available so we cannot verify the statements.

Line 296 – Figure The scale does not correlate with the days of study (15-16?)

Line 304 to 313 – Analysing the figures we find difficulties in considering the “strong correlation” as it seems to have a lot of variation with time and conditions.

Line 353 – Please change word corruption by deterioration.

Conclusions – Please kindly explain why considerer 60% RH adequate for fishmeal storage as higher RH increases the growth of moulds? Having in consideration the results we are not agreeing with your conclusions.

Thank you. Best regards

Author Response

Please refer to the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors please find here our comments to your corrections: 

1.      Abstract: The authors need to rephrase the 1^st paragraph as it is repetitive.

 

This is text on authors revised version v2: Abstract: To explore the effect of storage conditions on the freshness of fishmeal, the acid value (AV), volatile basic nitrogen (VBN), and pH value were used as freshness evaluation indexes to explore the changes in freshness indexes during storage and the influence of mold counts on  freshness indexes.

 

This is the text on authors version 1:

Abstract: To explore the effect of storage conditions on the freshness index and the mold counts of fishmeal, the acid value (AV), volatile basic nitrogen (VBN), and pH value were used as freshness evaluation indexes to explore the changes in freshness indexes during storage and the influence of mold counts on freshness indexes.

 

 

2.      Line 45 . Please change word fishy taste by fish smell

 

 

3.      Line 66 – Palatability – We think this word should not be used as it is not applicable.

Please rephrase.

 

 

4.      Line 90 a 94 – The issue is maintained. There is not an explanation of what is GRA (the acronym should be presented in extension first time used in text) and there is not a reference here. Also in the method section GRA and TOPSIS methods should be. We tried to check the original but again it is in Chinese so please explain in a summarized away in methods section the methods.

 

 

5.      Line 165– Did the authors found only moulds or yeasts as well? Please explain if antibiotics were added to media for bacterial inhibition.

 

6.      As the Chinese Standard is not available for us it is not possible to check the components of the culture media. It seems there is some confusion on your answer because it seems to reflect lack of knowledge of some basic concepts of microbiology. Antibiotics do not affect moulds.  

 

7 AV  Figures a) and b) Make larger figures and join a) and b) and change scale

You have not merged figures a) and b) but you want to present comparison of 5 different temperatures in AV.

The scale in figure a) goes up to 4.4. In figure b) it goes to 4.0 and has a dotted line on 3.0. It is still difficult to compare. The same happens with figure pH.  

 

 

8.      Line 300 – “GRA greater than 0,8”. Please explain the basis for this value or give a reference.

 

We were not able to find reference 35. Maybe reference in incomplete as DOI does not work.  

 Thank you

 

 

Author Response

Please refer to the attachment.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx