Oregano Oil, Epsilon-Polylysine and Citric Acid Assisted Inactivation of Salmonella in Two Kinds of Tahini during Thermal Treatment and Storage

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In general, the presented work is dealing with an interesting topic of food microbiology for which no plenty of data are available until today. Authors in the current work evaluate the effect of various natural antimicrobials on the inactivation of Salmonella species in two kinds of tahini during thermal treatment and storage. Regarding materials and methods, the study is designed appropriately with detailed presentation of the methods used. It is actually a confusing fact that different antimicrobial agents are used for each experiment. This fact makes it difficult for the reader to follow up. Findings are adequately supported by the discussion. However, there are several points of concern prior to publication.

Major concern:

The first point is that in this work the authors studied ‘diluted tahini simulating common edible methods at home or restaurant’. It would be a necessity to provide some info about how common is this diluted tahini which seems a bit unfamiliar to general literature.

The second point concerns an important questionable issue regarding the safety terms (or even organoleptic) of the concentration of the essential oils incorporated into tahini.

Minor issues:

In Section 2.2 no information is given for the essential oil used in this study, i.e. company or concentrations used. Pls also specify concentrations for the rest of the antimicrobials used (Ln 81).

Lactic acid is not mentioned anyway again after S2.2, pls clarify.

Ln 89, pls provide an indication of how did you modify tahini a_w.

Ln 75, pls explain better do you mean by ‘background bacteria’.

In section 2.5 pls explain did you use only and only one species?

Pls correct properly ‘a_w’ in Ln 107.

Regorging Table 1, do you consider to be comparable 2 samples with such different moisture content.

Pls correct throughout the manuscript (and Figure 1 and Tables) bacterial name appropriately as ‘Salmonella montevideo’, ‘Salmonella typhimurium’ etc.

Author Response

See my response letter as attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1. Table 1. no explanation of the abbreviations used below the table
2.  (R2 = 0.973-0.996) or (RMSE = 0.078-0.279) - is this the result of a subtraction or a range? Although I understand this provision, it may be misleading
3. The statistical comparisons (a, b, c, d, or #) are not entirely clear. lowercase letters should be superscript, # indicates no statistical significance of the sample at p = 0.05 relative to which sample?
4. To enhance the presentation of the graphs, I suggest also performing a two-way ANOVA for the obtained results. The graphs show points and standard deviations, but there is no information about statistically significant differences. 

Author Response

See my response letter as attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Pls find  my comments  attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

See our response letter.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx