Qualitative Preliminary Approach for the Development of a Sensory Vocabulary for Actinidia arguta Fruits
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1) The article approaches an actual subject and the topic is current and of great interest. Your research is important for the Academia environment and also for the other stakeholders interested in the consumer behaviour. However, several changes are needed. Please take into account the following suggestions:
2) Add more research and detail to the literature review on consumer perceptions of fruit quality, and specifically the perception of fruit and vegetable attributes.
3)The methodology of the paper describes only qualitative research, hence the title should be changed. I have not found any information about quantitative research in this article.
4) In the article can find language errors, e.g. verse 191, verse 2015
5) The data were processed with the multivariate Multiple Factor Analysis, add more to the article more results and data from this analysis.
6) The section discussions needs a lot of improvements, since there are few comments within previous researches. Conclusions need improvements and managerial implications are not very obvious.
Author Response
We would like to express Our heartfelt thanks for the time you have invested in evaluating our manuscript. We are submitting a revised draft of our paper. We have revised our manuscript to reflect the suggestions . All the modification are tracked with the revision tools.
We have also revised the English language sending to The MDPI service the manuscript (we have attched the certificate).
Thank you for your consideration.
We hope that you will find the revised manuscript suitable for publication in your Journal
Sincerely, the authors
Answer to COMMENTS:
Rev 1
The article approaches an actual subject and the topic is current and of great interest. Your research is important for the Academia environment and also for the other stakeholders interested in the consumer behaviour. However, several changes are needed. Please take into account the following suggestions:
2) Add more research and detail to the literature review on consumer perceptions of fruit quality, and specifically the perception of fruit and vegetable attributes. We have tried to improve the introduction section as suggested.
3) The methodology of the paper describes only qualitative research, hence the title should be changed. I have not found any information about quantitative research in this article.
We agree we have modified as suggested the title of the manuscript.
4) In the article can find language errors, e.g. verse 191, verse 2015
We have checked the English language sending the manuscript to the MDPI service for the translation ( plese see the certificate in attchment).
5) The data were processed with the multivariate Multiple Factor Analysis, add more to the article more results and data from this analysis.
We are sorry it was a refuse (in the abstract) all referements to MFA was deleted
6) The section discussions needs a lot of improvements, since there are few comments within previous researches. Conclusions need improvements and managerial implications are not very obvious. We have tried to invrease the conclusions sections as follows: The current situation forces in fact warehouses and industries to develop different strategies to differentiate their products in order to create and deliver value to consumers, which are surrounded by countless options in the market and have become more demanding for products with higher standards of quality. The development of a sensory vocabulary for fruits limitedly consumed such as Actinidia arguta fruits could help operators to better market their product also in relation to the correct maturity index.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Review for the manuscript entitled Qualitatitive and quantitative preliminary approach for the creation of a sensory vocabulary for Actinidia arguta fruits (applsci-1402181)
This manuscript presents a consumer study about the development of a sensory lexicon for kiwi fruits. To achieve the aim, authors selected consumers for focus group, CATA test and hedonic test. Data were statistically interpreted. However, the section of materials and methods is rather incomplete and the quality of presentation of the results can be improved. In conclusion, the manuscript needs some additional work, and after a major revision it can be published in Applied Sciences.
Here are some comments and questions to the Authors:
- Title: L3: “Development” might be a better choice in the title instead of “creation”. Please check the typos also (find them below at the “other remarks” section).
- Materials and methods.
The data provided by the authors for each section of the M&M regarding the focus group (L131-139), consumer assessment (L141-148), and hedonic test (L149-156) are insufficient to provide the reader the full view of the methodology applied. Some questions are written below, and they will help you to fill in the missing data:
Evaluators:
How many consumers participated in section 2.3? Were there consumers who participated in all tests?
Please provide the mean age ± standard deviation for all the tests in the manuscript.
What were the selection criteria of the panelists?
Why did the authors choose only consumers for this test? A validation test with trained panelists using other sensory methods could validate the results obtained with the consumers, and provide more reliable data about the sensory quality of the product.
Sensory session: How long was each session? How did the authors address the sensory fatigue?
Samples:
How were the samples presented (whole fruit or cuts – in this case, what was the size of the cuts)?
What was the order of the presentation of the samples? Were samples codified? If so, how?
Were panelists provided with water or something else as a palate cleanser? If so, what was it?
Hedonic scale: usually it is presented in reverse order: 1 - ”dislike extremely” to 9 – “like extremely”.
- Results - Figures.
Figure 3: Please remove the question marks written alongside every sensory attribute present on the chart axis.
L217. “The sensorial quality was expressed by the personal preferences of the panellists and
results are reported in the Figure 3.” It is rather consumption quality, isn’t it, since it was evaluated by consumers? Only experts can provide results about the sensory quality of a product.
- Other remarks:
English editing and style
There are numerous typos along the manuscript. Please carefully revise the whole manuscript and correct them. I give some examples below:
L2: Qualitatitive
L45: techniques
L138: emotive à emotional
L146: questionnaire
L191, L201:hhedonistic
L219-220: Please rephrase, it is unclear: “Statistically significantly differences in fact regards these two attribute of taste..”. Maybe this is a choice: Statistically significantly differences in fact regards these two attributes of taste …
L227: was were able to distinguish different
Author Response
We would like to express Our heartfelt thanks for the time you have invested in evaluating our manuscript. We are submitting a revised draft of our paper. We have revised our manuscript to reflect the suggestions . All the modification are tracked with the revision tools.
We have also revised the English language sending to The MDPI service the manuscript (we have attched the certificate).
Thank you for your consideration.
We hope that you will find the revised manuscript suitable for publication in your Journal
Sincerely, the authors
Answer to COMMENTS:
Rev 2
Title: L3: “Development” might be a better choice in the title instead of “creation”. Please check the typos also (find them below at the “other remarks” section).
We agree. We have modified the title as suggested.
Materials and methods.
The data provided by the authors for each section of the M&M regarding the focus group (L131-139), consumer assessment (L141-148), and hedonic test (L149-156) are insufficient to provide the reader the full view of the methodology applied. Some questions are written below, and they will help you to fill in the missing data:
Thank you very much for the suggesstions. We have improved the missing informations as reported below.
Evaluators:
How many consumers participated in section 2.3? Were there consumers who participated in all tests?
Please provide the mean age ± standard deviation for all the tests in the manuscript.
What were the selection criteria of the panelists? We agree. We have improved this information in the 2.4 paragraph.
Why did the authors choose only consumers for this test? A validation test with trained panelists using other sensory methods could validate the results obtained with the consumers, and provide more reliable data about the sensory quality of the product. We agree with the revisor observation. This was a preliminary work and the “use of panelist” from Sata s.r.l. company was time consuming and itwasn’t possible to have for the validation step.
Sensory session: How long was each session? How did the authors address the sensory fatigue? We have improved this information in the 2.4 section
Samples:
How were the samples presented (whole fruit or cuts – in this case, what was the size of the cuts)? We have checked it and we have improved this information in the 2.4 section
What was the order of the presentation of the samples? Were samples codified? If so, how? We have checked it and we have improved this information in the 2.4 section
Were panelists provided with water or something else as a palate cleanser? If so, what was it? We have checked it and we have improved this information in the 2.4 section
Hedonic scale: usually it is presented in reverse order: 1 - ”dislike extremely” to 9 – “like extremely”. We have checked it in the manuscript.
Results - Figures.
Figure 3: Please remove the question marks written alongside every sensory attribute present on the chart axis. We have checked. we suppose that it is an automatic errors when we upload the manuscript.
L217. “The sensorial quality was expressed by the personal preferences of the panellists and results are reported in the Figure 3.” It is rather consumption quality, isn’t it, since it was evaluated by consumers? Only experts can provide results about the sensory quality of a product. We agree. We have modified as suggested.
Other remarks:
English editing and style
We have checked the English language sending the manuscript to the MDPI service for the translation ( plese see the certificate in attchment).
There are numerous typos along the manuscript. Please carefully revise the whole manuscript and correct them. I give some examples below:
L2: Qualitatitive
L45: techniques
L138: emotive à emotional
L146: questionnaire
L191, L201:hhedonistic
L219-220: Please rephrase, it is unclear: “Statistically significantly differences in fact regards these two attribute of taste..”. Maybe this is a choice: Statistically significantly differences in factregards these two attributes of taste …
L227: was were able to distinguish different
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Review for the manuscript entitled Qualitative preliminary approach for the development of a sensory vocabulary for Actinidia arguta fruits (applsci-1402181)
Dear Authors, the revised version of the manuscript applsci-1402181 was much improved and carefully redrafted. I do appreciate all the effort made by the Authors for improving the quality of the presented work. In my opinion, the revised manuscript meets the journal requirements and is suitable for publication after including some minor corrections listed below.
Minor shortcomings:
L151: Although CATA is new as a method, it was first described in 2007. References: Adams, J., Williams, A., Lancaster, B., & Foley, M. (2007). Advantages and uses of check-all-that-apply response compared to traditional scaling of attributes for salty snacks. In, 7th Pangborn sensory science symposium. This is a significant work about this test and in my opinion it should not be ignored.
L252: appearance – no need for capitalization.
Figure 3: Sweetness (double -s)
Author Response
Thank you very much to revised again the manuscript.As suggested we have checked it for the minor revisions. We have signed them in green.
The authors.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
