Treatment of Pesticide-Contaminated Water Using a Selected Fungal Consortium: Study in a Batch and Packed-Bed Bioreactor

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

First, I would like to congratulate the authors on this great work.

I found some errors, probably due to a typo.

The PTFE membrane in line 93 has a cutting edge of 0.22 micrometers rather than millimeters, right?

In line 190, "injected at" is not required.

Reaction 2 in line 202 is correctly either C_t / C_o = e^-kt or ln C_t / C_o = -kt.

In the sentence beginning at line 319, "we" should be replaced by "were" after the enzyme.

In line 493 "CP" should be replaced by "CHL".

In some places, words were incorrectly separated due to layout, in line 141 not mi-croorganisms, in line 186 not anal-ysis.

The headers of Tables 1 (in line 95) and 3 (from line 356) remained on previous pages, which degrades the uniform appearance of the tables.

Also, for a more consistent look, fit tables and figures in a uniform layout (center).

For ease of reading, I would have liked to have seen a table of abbreviations either at the very beginning or at the end of the article.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Please see the attachment.

Regards

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This article is aimed on the possible use of certain fungal strains for the removal of pesticides from water and wastewater. The authors performed several types of experiments to verify the possible inhibitory effect on selected strains, the efficiency of removal of selected pesticides, the effect of pesticides on enzymatic activity and also they observed the metabolites are formed during decomposition. They tested whether the two selected strains had better efficacy alone or as a consortium. Both static (batch test) and dynamic flow test were used in the work. The work is written clearly and well structured. The amount of used literature and citations is sufficient.

 

Questions and comments:

- Line 66 - 2,4-D it would be better to write the whole name.

- Line 122 - temperature 30 ° C is quite high. Could the tests work even at lower temperatures, e.g. laboratory (approx. 20 ° C) or lower?

- Line 158 – were also these experiments performed at 30 ° C? Please add to the text.

- Lines 216 to 219 - you write that at 50 mg/L ATZ there was low inhibition in H5. H12 had lower efficiency (up to 55%) and no inhibition was observed. However, according to Figure 2, it seems that the inhibition was at lower concentrations (lower efficiency at 10, 20 mg/L versus 50 mg/L ATZ). How do you explain that?

- Line 226 - does this mean that no analyses were performed? If so, how do you explain that no metabolites were formed using the single strains?

- Line 288, 292 and 295 – HA, 3,5-DCA and TCP - When using the abbreviation for the first time, write the full name of the compound.

- Line 425 - can there be or may occur that three pesticides to be present in the waters at the same time?

- Line 460 - IPR is a fungicide. Why it did not inhibit the used strains H5 and H12?

- Lines 479 to 480 - briefly, please add in one sentence why the complete removal of ATZ from water and wastewater is problematic.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Please see the attachment

Regards

Author Response File: Author Response.docx