Influence of Ripening Stage on Quality Parameters of Five Traditional Tomato Varieties Grown under Organic Conditions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper has a potential to be accepted, but some important points have to be clarified or fixed before taking the decision. Here I summarize the main points that need to be answered:
- Introduction lacks of information about the productivity of tomato in the world, specifically in Spain. In addition more information are required regarding the hybrid tomato.
-what did you mean by Fruit type 2 in the table 1??
- The authors have to explain the plants used for sampling were cultivated or not. If yes, please detail each agronomic information. Anyway you have to detail the microclimatic conditions of the geographical area were you obtained your fruits during the year. Geographical coordinates, meters on the sea level- Temperatures min max, rain, type of soil
-There is no graph of HPLC  results for Vitamin C  and Carotenoids
-Comparing with ABTS which is highly unrelated to the compounds of interest doesn't provide enough information to support the authors' claim.In accordance with the abstract, you used in one assay in order to affirm the antioxidant capacity of your sample. However, just one kind of assay is not enough to say that
-Conclusion needs to be rewritten again in order to match the objectives.

Author Response

The answers to your comments are in the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The research on the characterization of tomato traditional varieties is very interesting.

In my opinion, the article should be focused on the comparison between different varieties at different stages of ripening rather than on the influence of ripening stage in different varieties, so I suggest to restructuring the article  and change the title.

The evolution of many quality parameters during ripening are well known in the bibliography and furthermore some quality parameters are also ripening indices. The authors determine the three stages of ripening according to the colour (line 64-66) of the fruit and then in the results (Table 3 Fig 4) show the differences in colour according to the stage of ripening.

In the introduction I suggest to insert few lines for describing some important characteristics of the local varieties and the hybrid Baghera or Bagheera ?

In the materials and methods section, a few more details could be given on the cultivation technique (irrigation, fertilisation, harvesting period, etc.), the number of plants per variety or cultivated area and whether they were arranged according to an experimental design. Plants were planted at the same time? Harvest date are the same or differ greatly among the different varieties?

The experimental design(s) is not very clear:

The experimental design (line 66-67) talks about 10 random fruits per maturity stage and cv.

For TTS, Ta, pH and AI FI:  2 replicates were used (Line 81). For an adequate statistical analysis, a minimum of 3 replicates should be used.

For firmness and colour I suppose that 10 replicates were used.

For carotenoids, vitamin C, you used 3 replicates,

for TAA ? and Sensory evaluation?

 

In Tab. 2 there is an ANOVA; In Fig. 2 and 3 Dev. Stand ?; In Tab 3 ANOVA; In Fig 3 , 4 and 5 Dev. Stand ?

In Tab 6 ANOVA, In Fig. 6 non-statistical analysis

 

The results are not well described and do not consider the statistical analysis (Tables) or vice versa (Fig. 6).

In addition, there are errors in the statistical analysis in Tab 2 (for T2 TTS light red and red are the same value (5.13) with different letter).

The description of the results is not correct (Line 148-149).

The tables are badly formatted and cannot be read well.

Captions are incomplete. 

Author Response

Thank you for your revision and comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Please, see the attached PDF manuscript for the minor suggestions to improve your manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your revision and comments. We have included all your suggestions in the revised manuscript. In the figure captions, we have now mentioned the statistical analysis and number of replicates and showed the statistical differences according to mean separation method.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments to the manuscript horticulturae-1634224 "Influence of ripening stage on quality parameters of five traditional tomato varieties grown under organic conditions".

Authors propose the report of an experiment of comparison  of tomato fruit quality and sensory analysis performed on five traditional and one recently selected cultivars, as well as on three fruit ripening stages. Standard fruit chemical composition, firmness, peel color, taste quality, pulp ascorbic acid content and antioxidant properties of the pulp were determined. The manuscript contains some interesting technological data but the novelty of the research is limited and the information obtained few original.

Moreover, the manuscript contains some problems in the results presentation and, in my opinion, may be suitable for publication after major revision. Please check the following suggestions.

1) Page 2, line 76: the citation [41] is the number [22] according the order of citation.

2) Page 4, line 148: the "acceptability" and the "flavor" indexes have not been described in the Materials and Methods section. How the two indexes reported in the Figure 2 have been calculated?

3) Figures 2-6: Please indicate some marker of the significant differences among the means. If you do not report the results of the mean separation test, it is impossible to evaluate the soundness of your affirmations on the differences resulting by the experiment.

4) Why Authors do not check for correlations between sensory analysis data and results of the pulp chemical analysis?

Author Response

Thank you for your revision and comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

We believe that it is necessary to include the chromatograms in the manuscript or supplementary file  

Author Response

Thank you for your revision and comments. We attach the chromatograms of vitamin C and carotenoids in a file for you to see. The images quality is not very good because we have had to scan the chromatograms as we did not have access to the data on the chromatograph. So we think it is better not to put the chromatograms as supplementary material.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Respect to my first revision the arguments in point n 1 have not been adequately resolved

The results are not described correctly.

Since the purpose of the work is to compare the different varieties and the statistical analysis is made by degree of ripeness it would be better to comment first the differences between the different varieties and possibly after that making observations on the trend during ripening

Since a statistical analysis (anova) has been carried out; if there are different values but marked by the same letter it means that the values are not statistically different.

As example  in line 162 - 165  you write: “TSS content increased with ripening for all varieties, showing the highest values at the last stage (red), except in T5 which tended to decrease with maturity”.

Data indicate  that for T1 and T4 values decreases (turning to light red) and after increases (red)

“ whereas at red stage ‘Baghera’ and T2 were the highest (Table 2).”

The letter “c” as anova result for T2 at red stage is present also in T1 and T4. That means that the different are not significant.

The figures rappresentation is confused. It’s better to merge the histogram bars for the varieties and not for the stage of ripeness. in this way it is complicated to interpret the different letters.

Author Response

Thank you for your revision and comments.

1- Respect to my first revision the arguments in point n 1 have not been adequately resolved

The results are not described correctly.

We have rewritten some sentences on Results taking into account your comments.

2- Since the purpose of the work is to compare the different varieties and the statistical analysis is made by degree of ripeness it would be better to comment first the differences between the different varieties and possibly after that making observations on the trend during ripening

Since a statistical analysis (anova) has been carried out; if there are different values but marked by the same letter it means that the values are not statistically different.

You are right.

3- As example  in line 162 - 165  you write: “TSS content increased with ripening for all varieties, showing the highest values at the last stage (red), except in T5 which tended to decrease with maturity”.

Data indicate  that for T1 and T4 values decreases (turning to light red) and after increases (red)

“ whereas at red stage ‘Baghera’ and T2 were the highest (Table 2).”

The letter “c” as anova result for T2 at red stage is present also in T1 and T4. That means that the different are not significant.

This paragraph has been rewritten taking into account your comments.

What we wanted to say in that paragraph is that the TSS, in all varieties, has a tendency to increase or maintain and that does not happen in T5. Of course, this statement is not based on statistical analysis since it has been done by comparing the varieties at each ripening stage.

4-The figures rappresentation is confused. It’s better to merge the histogram bars for the varieties and not for the stage of ripeness. in this way it is complicated to interpret the different letters.

The figures are represented like this because we think in this way we can see more clearly the evolution of each parameter for each tomato variety. To verify the significant differences between varieties, it is necessary to do it by ripening stage, as indicated in the legends of the figures and tables.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments to the manuscript horticulturae-1634224 "Influence of ripening stage on quality parameters of five traditional tomato varieties grown under organic conditions".

In my opinion, Authors have sufficiently changed the text according to the reviers suggestions and now it is suitable for publication.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your revision.

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

the article has not been sufficiently improved and many of the comments made in the two revisions have not been taken on board