Effect of Different Forms of Sulfur Fertilization on Bioactive Components and Antioxidant Activity of White Cabbage (Brassica Oleracea L.)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1) The paper is not in the official format of MDPI Appl.Sci. Word template - the article, including the tables need to be formatted accordingly.

2) The introduction part is a bit too long and does not actually lead to the reasons of why the Research was conducted.

3) The justification and selection of the fertilizers should be added to the materials and methods paragraph. There is some confusion with the name of the experimental cultivar.

4) The paper has paragraph for the results, but not for discussions. Overall, the discussion is poor and the results are not enough explained.

5) The conclusions should give future perspectives and research aims.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

1. The article has been properly formatted to the requirements of the publishing houses
2. The introduction part was shortened and corrected 
3. Selected forms of sulfur fertilizers are most often used for fertilizing vegetable crops. The name of the experimental variety has been standardized.
4. The performance paragraph was revised and additional discussion took place.
   
5. The conclusion have been corrected 

Reviewer 2 Report

The study described by Agnieszka et al., evaluated the impact of specific form of Sulphur fertilization on the chemical properties of white cabbage. In addition, they also evaluated the impact of its storage (0-4 °C, humidity 90÷96%, and storage time of 5 months) in terms of changes to its bioactive components and antioxidant activity. The novelty of the study is lacking. The study is not much informative and new. The present form of the study is not acceptable. Apart from these, there are few more technical questions which are mentioned bellow: 1. The result of antioxidant assay demonstrated that following storage of cabbage there was an increase in both ABTS and DPPH free radical scavenging activities. Author need to explain the rationale behind it. 2. The unit of ABTS and DPPH free radical scavenging activities need to be mentioned. Please check table no. 4. As a reader’s point of view, it is difficult to conclude the result demonstrated in table 4. In addition, error value is also missing. 3. The result and discussion part must improve.

Author Response

Stone Head  is an old cultivar of white head cabbage, with a good  storage ability, resistant to many common cabbage diseases and also resistant to cracking and splitting as it matures.  It is a very good cultivar popular in organic and traditional farms also for the production of sauerkraut. Selected forms of sulfur fertilizers are most often used for fertilizing vegetable crops.

The research description has been corrected. 

1. This has been clarified and confronted with the literature
2. Table 4 shows the correlation between the antioxidant activity and the remaining bioactive compounds determined, No error value is used in correlation, there are also no units there  
3. The discussion of the results and conclusions were corrected 

Reviewer 3 Report

This is an interesting study investigating the effects of different forms of sulfur fertilization on bioactive compounds and antioxidant activity of white cabbage. The authors measured the antioxidant activity using two methods ABTS and DPPH scavenging activity. The following are my comments:

1) The manuscript is highly recommended to be extensively edited for the language quality as it is not easy to understand.

2) The introduction is too long and should be trimmed to include the basic backgrounds. Please provide the significance of this study, especially in regard to the agriculture or any concerning environmental problem?

3) A better description on why ABTS and DPPH scavenging activities were measured and how are these two methods differ? How do the bioactive compounds correlate to these two scavenging activities?

4) No discussion on the results was provided.

5) All tables/figures should be descriptively described in the figure legends.

6) Some references were not properly cited in the main text. For instance in Line 222, the reference should be "Samec et al."

7) Please ensure the references are following the proper format.

Author Response

1. The manuscript was checked by nativespeker, however, if there are still some shortcomings, we can send again to MPDI for a language correction
2. The introduction has been improved 
3. The differences between DPPH and ABTS have not been fully explained because it is not the purpose of this paper. For his needs, the analytical method of both determinations was described in detail. The correlation is presented in Table 4 
4. The discussion of the results was supplemented 
5. Table descriptions have been corrected 
6. References have been corrected and supplemented with new entries.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript has improved as requested by the reviewers and can be now considered for publishing in the present form.

Author Response

Thank you very much.

Reviewer 2 Report

It can be accepted.

Author Response

Thank you very much.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have made significant improvement to the manuscript. It now has clearer objectives, significance and description of the tables. I would suggest the authors to make the following changes:

Line 91: please clarify "65 DAT"?

Line 98: please clarify "90÷96?"

Lines 110-114: please re-phrase the sentence.

Please correct all temperature unit from 0C to ⁰C (example Lines 136, 138, 144-145)

Tables 1-3: I suggest to superscript the letters (a-e) following the mean values

Author Response

Please correct all temperature unit from 0C to ⁰C (example Lines 136, 138, 144-145) - Has been corrected

DAT (days after transplanting),

relative air humidity 90÷96%,

Table 1-3 I suggest to superscript the letters (a-e) following the mean values - Has been corrected,

article was linguistically revised in MDPI,