Quality Assessment of Loquat under Different Preservation Methods Based on Physicochemical Indicators, GC–MS and Intelligent Senses

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Rewrite the highlights because they are not specific to your work.

Introduction

Include the novelty work

Materials and methods

What was the ripening stage of loquat?

Lines 130-134. Why was loquat stored at two different temperatures?

The treatments described include different preservation methods. The authors stored at 4ºC two groups of loquat treated with two different conservation methods and the other three treatments at room temperature. Afterward, the authors conducted a statistical analysis, which I infer was a one-way ANOVA. However, this cannot be confirmed until it is specified in the methodology. This is important as it does not correspond to the same temperature condition; hence, a correct statistical procedure must be used.

The statistical analysis is not complete. You should provide more details about the experimental design and media comparison. Additionally, the multivariate analysis was not mentioned.

Results and discussion

The discussion is poor.

Figure 7c does not show the colors that describe each treatment applied.

Conclusion

The conclusion is broad, should not include results, and must respond to the work's objective.

Author Response

Please refer to the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript explores the effects of different preservation methods on the quality of loquat. VFP was the most effective preservation method with minimal impact. The manuscript shows a complete analysis and interesting conclusions; only some details need to be improved. The discussion needs grammatical improvements.

Minor changes

Line 130-135: describe the experimental design (number of fruits per treatment, number of clamshell).

Section 2.2: Please clarify if determinations were done with loquat slurry or whole fruits

Section 2.4: describe the number of fruits used for this determination

Sections 2.2.5,2.2.6 and 2.3. Please clarify the number of independent extractions and technical replicates.

Table 3. Please clarify the N in the legend.

Section 3. Please improve the verbal form of referenced studies in the discussion. For example, Line 263: "The lowest scores have been observed previously for NP" instead of "The lowest scores were observed for NP". Use "were" and "was" for the result of the present work and "has been" for the previous study.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The verbal form of referenced studies in the discussion should be improved.

Author Response

Please refer to the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I was tasked to review the research article “Quality assessment of loquat under different preservation methods based on physicochemical indicators, GC-MS and intelligent senses” for Horticulturae. The article involves a relevant number of techniques to characterize loquats submitted to different storing approaches, from different points of view. This experimental set-up is very complete and not common for this kind of experiments. I have only some minor comments and revision to ask to the authors. From my point of view the introduction does not provide sufficient information about the topic. This section must be enriched and improved. In the material and methods section the description of procedures is brief and must be improved: the authors must remember that the reader should be able to replicate the experiments. Also the number of references is low for this topic. Below some specific cooments.

-        Line 99. Add to references [10-12] this citation (10.1002/mas.21802) in order to complete the panel of reviews to cover green preparation methods for fermented beverages.

-        Line 144. Explain the panel composition. Gender, age, and other aspects must be declared.

-        Line 161. Add fundamental details such as sample mass, time, and other parameters. I am not able to replicate the experiment with what the authors write.

-        Line 176. How did the authors acquire the calibration curve of the instrument?

-        Line 203. Authors used 2g of pulp into a 15 mL vial so I think they used headspace sampling. All details about this part must be declared and explained, especially if SPME was used. How was the quantitation performed? Also this part must be explained. The reader MUST be able to replicate the experiment by reading your article.

-        Table 4. The molecular formulae is not correct, this is a phenol. Compounds are separated by a “total” but it’s not specified the categorization criteria (by functional group I think).

-        Line 416. “Comprehend” have different meaning from “understand”

-        Figure 6. The trend of carbonyls (aldehydes and ketones) is the opposite but both these classes of odorants are related to oxygen and oxidation processes. Do the authors have any explanation? Here some suggestions over volatile carbonyls compounds (https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.2c07083)

-        Line 444. This analysis cannot be intended as quantitative.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Some minor revisions but nothing in particular

Author Response

Please refer to the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The methodology clearly describes the use of two temperatures during the storage of the loquat; however, the authors did not explain the purpose of using these two different temperatures and applying a statistical design to compare all data without considering the temperature factor. I understand that this manuscript aimed to study the effect of different preservation methods on the quality of loquats; however, the temperature is an important factor that could determine the success of the treatment applied. Consequently, the loquat stored at 4 ºC could be preserved for long, regardless of the treatment.

Statistical design was not included in the manuscript.

The conclusion should include information on the effect of temperature of storage in combination with the most effective treatment for preserving loquat.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf