The Effect of Irradiation on the Quality Properties of Tarhana
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript described the use of irradiation on tarhana to control microorganism spoilage and pest formation during storage of this traditional food product. The manuscript also investigated the effect of irradiation on physical and chemical properties of tarhana during storage.
Minor English grammars occur throughout the manuscript. Below are just some examples but there is a need to perform a grammar check throughout.
Line 20: Is “However” an appropriate word here?
Line 22: need rephrase
Line 24-25: Replace “As a conclusion” with “In conclusion”
Line 25: “Replace “in order to” with “to”
Line 24-27: This sentence is too long. Suggest to split it into 2 sentences
Line 31: Replace ”famine threaten” with “with a threat of famine”
Line 31-32: Suggest change to “Tarhana is a traditional fermented food that…”
Line 39: Delete “also”
Line 40: Replace “results of” with “results in”
Line 43: “Aflatoxins” doesn’t need to be capitalised.
Line 45-47: The last sentence is awkwardly phrased.
Line 58: Suggest change to “The present study aimed to determine …”
Line 66: Local markets of what city, country?. What is “TS 2282”?
Line 71 and line 73: Inconsistency: the samples were stored for 5 months or 6 months in total?
Section 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, and 2.8. How many replications were used for each analysis?
Line 124: Suggest change to “Viable Organism Content of Tarhana Samples during Storage”
I think that the results section needed to be reworked to describe the results clearer and it needs significant English improvements. To me, it seems that irradiation has an amazing impact on the pest formation and this should be the start of the results.
For the microorganisms, it should start with a general observation then go into details. For example, the 3.1. results should start by stating that irradiation results in a significant reduction of microorganisms in the samples. During storage, the number of microorganisms in the irradiated samples increased over time whilst minimal changes observed in the control sample. Then they should talk about the TAMB, yeast and Bacillus cereus in the details.
Additionally, it would be good to see the statistical comparisons of the results at each timepoint, eg, at 5 months, is TAMB of the control sample is significantly higher than the 10 kGy, 5 kGy and 2.5 kGy. This would help the authors making the statement of at which timepoint, the irradiated samples “caught” up with the control samples in terms of viable organism content.
Figure 1-4 legends: Are the results described as mean +/- SE or SD? N=? Significant symbols should be added at each time points to compare between treatments.
In terms of colour measurement, the authors should define how L, a, b correlate to lightness, redness and yellowness.
It is not clear when the authors compared between samples without any particular time point.
I think Figure 1-4 should be remade to the format of Figure 5.
Figure 5 legends: Are the results described as mean +/- SE or SD? N=? Significant difference statement needed, what are the method of determine significant differences?
It is not clear to me why the authors measure antioxidant properties of the tarhana samples. This needs to be explained and discussed.
The paper needs a discussion section, otherwise the results section needs to change to “results and discussion”. If the authors intented to combine results and discussion then they need to expand the current text to include more discussion of the results, in particularly the antioxidant properties.
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewers
I gratefully thank all the reviewers for their fruitful comments which enable development of the manuscript. I also thank to the Editors for their efforts at handling our manuscript.
The author's response to the reviewer comments were given as attachment.
We tried to do our best and met all the comments.
Best regards.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript presents the effect of irradiation on the microbiological, chemical and physical properties of powdered tarhana (traditional Turkish fermented food). Irradiation eliminates the microbiological risk and pests formation during tarhana storage, but reduces the consistency of tarhana soups. The presented paper is interesting, but it contains poor discussion of the results. The discussion must be expanded.
Line 65: ‘Powdered tarhana samples with moisture below 14%...’ Samples? It was only one type of tarhana or many purchased from local markets?
Line 65: Did the Authors measure the moisture content of the sample (‘below 14%’) before storage? Was this value read from the packaging?
Line 73: ‘….microbiological analysis during 6 months of storage.’ In line 71 Authors stored tarhana samples for 5 months? Storage time presented in the figure 1 (microbiological changes) was 5 months. This should be clearly defined.
Line 112-115: Total Phenolic Content (TPC) Analysis should be better edited. I did not see similarity to cited literature [16]. Please give more details.
Line 142-143: How long is the shelf life of powdered tarhana? Is shelf life limited since opening the package? Is this not due to improper storage and not good closed of opening bags?
Figure 2b: Please add acidity unit.
Figure 2c: Please add moisture values of control and irradiated tarhana before storage.
Line 161-162: ‘Because color components can be broken down with strong ionizing radiation’ provide the literature cited.
Line 166-168: Were there no statistical differences between samples (control and irradiated) for the color parameters ‘a’ and ‘b’?
Line 166-167: ‘The “a” and “b” values were decrease during the storage.’ Please discuss what caused the loss of color after storage.
Line 169-171 and Figure 3: ‘These results clearly showed that the irradiation has not any effect on the color quality of tarhana samples…’. Were there no statistical differences of color parameters (L, a, b)? In line 161-162 Authors wrote that the radiation has effect on color components? Discussion is needed. Also, please explain what may be caused by the difference in lightness between samples after 1 month storage (Figure 3a).
Figure 5. Statistics do not show differences between control (and irradiated) sample after different storage time. Please complete statistics between time of storage (months), e.g. use more letters.
Line 224-225. ‘This section is not mandatory, but can be added to the manuscript if the discussion is unusually long or complex.’ Please delete this sentence.
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewers
I gratefully thank all the reviewers for their fruitful comments which enable development of the manuscript. I also thank to the Editors for their efforts at handling our manuscript.
The author's response to the reviewer comments were given as attachment.
We tried to do our best and met all the comments.
Best regards.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
General the manuscript is well written but needs improvement in some respects which I have listed in pdf file.
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewers
I gratefully thank all the reviewers for their fruitful comments which enable development of the manuscript. I also thank to the Editors for their efforts at handling our manuscript.
The author's response to the reviewer comments were given as attachment.
We tried to do our best and met all the comments.
Best regards.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The changes which were made improved the quality of the manuscript, although not all recommendations were completely followed. In detail -for example- Instead of figure 2, I propose to present the results of physicochemical analysis in a table. Overall I think that the scientific quality of the manuscript is now acceptable for publication.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for the efforts and the valuable comments which imporved our manuscript. In this turn, we transformed the figure 2 to Table format. Please see the table 1 in the manuscript.
Best regards.
