Lactic Acid Bacteria in the Production of Traditional Fermented Foods and Beverages of Latin America

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The work is well written and generally addresses the fermentation of some products, namely products from South America. It may be relevant for researchers who want to explore fermentation in general and/or typical products from that geographical area.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for their kind comment and we are very happy that they found our paper deserving of publication

Reviewer 2 Report

The Ms "Lactic acid bacteria in the production of traditional fermented foods and beverages of Latin America" has been revised. The review is focused on the characteristics of fermented foods and beverages made in Latin America with LAB. The manuscript is attractive and suitable for journal publication. 

General comment:

The topic is well-centred and described, although some concepts must be included. Among them, the most important is the biochemistry of lactic fermentation, and the differences between homolactic and heterolactic bacteria could be dealt with in the "Introduction". Equally important are the health and safety issues in household beverage production, which the authors must discuss more deeply in paragraph 4.

Concluding after some minor revision, I suggest the manuscript's publication:

Below a few suggested corrections are reported:

Line 38: "shelf life is extended" is the same as "preserving food" in line 36. Please rewrite the sentence.

Lines 55-58: Introducing something about homolactic and heterolactic LAB would be helpful.

Lines 70-75: some references about the global view of beverages could be inserted:

-         Liburdi, K., Bernini, R., & Esti, M. (2020). Fermented beverages: Geographical distribution and bioactive compounds with health benefits. In New and Future Developments in Microbial Biotechnology and Bioengineering (pp. 131-151). Elsevier.

-         Wang, Y., Zhang, C., Liu, F., Jin, Z., & Xia, X. (2022). Ecological succession and functional characteristics of lactic acid bacteria in traditional fermented foods. Critical reviews in food science and nutrition, 1-15.

-         Waters, D. M., Mauch, A., Coffey, A., Arendt, E. K., & Zannini, E. (2015). Lactic acid bacteria as a cell factory for the delivery of functional biomolecules and ingredients in cereal-based beverages: A review. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 55(4), 503-520.

Lines 119-130: This part is outside of the Ms topic. These processes involve exclusively alcoholic fermentation.

 

Table 1: The only alcoholic fermentation does not represent the purpose of the review. Please delete the reference concerning them.

Author Response

Please find our response in the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf