Pharmacy and Fragrances: Traditional and Current Use of Plants and Their Extracts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript Pharmacy and Fragrances: Traditional and current use of plants and their extracts submitted to Cosmetics journal is an interesting review article aiming on representing the most used medicinal plants in fragrance industry. The review gives an interesting insight into the history of the use of fragrances, the structure of fragrances and the methods of obtaining fragrances, as well as the origin of plants used for production of fragrances.

The topic is very actual, considering the growing number of small perfume producers. The review is comprehensive and relevant in the field of cosmetics. I would recommend the publication of the review after few minor revisions.

 

 

·       Please explain the “romatis scents” in the sentence “Authors such as Theophrastus, Pliny and Dioscorides wrote protocols for the manufacture of perfumes and descriptions of romatis scents”.

·       Figure 2- please give the explanation about the meaning of solvents/extracts and essential oil molecules in the figure.

·       Figure 3- why is essential oil in the middle of the figure? If you wanted to emphasise that essential oils can be produced by conventional and alternative methods maybe it would be better to put it before the methods, not between.

·       In the Methods of obtaining sentences, you should provide some examples for every method

·       Uniform the writing style (font size, color) and correct occasional typographical errors.

·       Page 7 – please correct smaller quantitative minority participation in the sentence before Table 1

·       Table 1- please change the name to botanical classification of plants… also rename the column essential oil to essential oil constituents/components.

·       Check the Table 1 carefully, there are some typographical errors and inconsistencies in table design.

·       For Figure 8 I would strongly recommend using photographs from microscopy – the pulverized material of herbal drugs is easily accessible, and the real photographs are much better way to present the secretory organs.

·       In the page 15, below the Figure 9, you have mentioned that the percentage of essence may vary. Please add a short part about quality control of essential oils (according to the European Pharmacopoeia)

·       Please remove or rephrase the sentence “This is what a professor of botany and partner of a cosmetics company tells in a web page, referring to the case of vanilla, a molecule in great demand nowadays, for which it can be obtained by chemical synthesis (Kraf process), although the public prefers that of natural origin.”

·       standardize the citation of references.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Some minor editing of english language is needed due to some typographical errors and unclear sentences.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, we want to thank you for your suggestions on the manuscript Pharmacy and Fragrances: Traditional and current use of plants and their extracts.

Your comments have been invaluable and have undoubtedly improved this first version. We have attended to all your observations. However, we have not corrected the wording in English, since we are not experts in this language and we will use the MDPI translation service if the work is accepted.

 

We have not been able to fully satisfy the improvement with photographs of figure 8. You know that you have to choose the material well and make quality microscopic preparations, both of powder and histological sections, it is a long process and requires some reagents specific, and the authors do not have them. For this reason we have added a bibliography in which the reader can consult these photos (it has not been easy to find them). In any case, we have preferred to keep the drawings adapted and selected from the European Pharmacopoeia to try to offer the greatest possible clarity, knowing that they are complementary to the photographs.

Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely

Prof. Dr. Francisco José González-Minero

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I found this review article interesting but I have certain remarks:

1- The abstract is very long, many paragraphs of it should be included in the introduction.

2- The historical account should be reduced to have only the essential information that is relevant to the scientific aspect without being adsorbed in historical reciting.

3- On page 4, I see no use of this phrase which has the reference number 21.

4- Figure 6 should be improved in quality it's blurred.

 

I do recommend the publication of this review.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

nothing to comment

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, we want to thank you for your suggestions on the manuscript Pharmacy and Fragrances: Traditional and current use of plants and their extracts.

Your comments have been invaluable and have undoubtedly improved this first version. We have attended to all your observations. However, we have not corrected the wording in English, since we are not experts in this language and we will use the MDPI translation service if the work is accepted.

 

Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely

Prof. Dr. Francisco José González-Minero