Evolution of Some Fruit Quality Parameters during Development and Ripening of Three Apricot Cultivars and Effect of Harvest Maturity on Postharvest Maturation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Unfortunately, the quality of apricot is not always good on the market, and this endangers the success of cultivation, because consumers are reluctant to buy poor quality fruit. Better understanding of the fruit development and ripening of varieties can help to obtain important information in this field. To put it into practice can help us to get the right goods on the market. The authors of this article have achieved results in this important field of research. Three apricot varieties have been studied. They have a great importance in cultivation not only in Spain but also in other apricot-growing countries. In the work modern methods were used, they were evaluated with scientific rigor, and the conclusions are correct. The results are presented in tables and illustrative figures.

Author Response

Thank you for your revision and your comments

Yours sincerely,

 

Reviewer 2 Report

In this manuscript, the authors described the characteristic of three apricot varieties in term of fruit development, fruit quality at harvest and the shelf-life changes after harvest. They provide experimental data regarding weight during development and stone formation, the changes in colour and firmness, the total amount of sugar and acids at harvest and during shelf life including also chlorophyll and carotenoids and finally they performed a sensory panel to evaluate the fine characteristics of these varieties.

I found the manuscript well written in all its sections and the figures are more than appropriate (11 figures). the manuscript gives a broad overview of the properties of these apricots for a further breeding program.

Author Response

Thank you for your revision and your comments

Yours sincerely,

 

Reviewer 3 Report

The article entitled ‘Evolution of some fruit quality parameters during development and ripening of three apricot cultivars and effect of harvest maturity on postharvest maturation’ fits well the scope of Agriculture. The manuscript is written in proper English without many typos and syntax mistakes and contains sufficient literature. The study evaluates fruit quality parameters in 3 apricot cultivars, namely ‘Spring Blush’, ‘Robada’ and ‘Kioto’, during fruit development and after 5 days of self-life at 20 ^oC. The authors concluded that the changes occurred during fruit development and maturation are highly depended on cultivar. Overall, they suggest that ‘Kioto’ had the biggest fruit size and its fruit were highly appreciated by the panelists, during sensory evaluation.

1. According to journal’s guidelines references must be numbered in order of appearance.
2. Line 81: ‘orchards’ instead of ‘orchard’.
3. Line 128: authors are advised to briefly describe the chromatographic method used.
4. Line 247: I can’t understand why color parameters of un-blushed side are the only ones shown. Authors may explain why they didn’t merge the parameters of both sides and present them. I believe that the separate presentation of color of blushed and un-blushed side, throughout manuscript and particularly in PCAs is quite complicated and a little tiring.      
5. Lines 366, 368: Authors mention a scale from 0 to 8, while in materials and methods (Line 139) they are referring to a continuous scale from 0 to 10.

Author Response

Thank you for your revision and coments. 

Point 1. According to journal’s guidelines references must be numbered in order of appearance.

Response 1. References have been numbered now, according to the journal’s instructions.

Point 2. Line 81: ‘orchards’ instead of ‘orchard’

Response 2. That change has been done in the improved manuscript, and all the text have been carefully revised and improved when necessary

Point 3. Line 128: authors are advised to briefly describe the chromatographic method used.

Response 3. A brief description of the UHPLC method has been included in the manuscript

Point 4. Line 247: I can’t understand why color parameters of un-blushed side are the only ones shown. Authors may explain why they didn’t merge the parameters of both sides and present them. I believe that the separate presentation of color of blushed and un-blushed side, throughout manuscript and particularly in PCAs is quite complicated and a little tiring.

Response 4. The manuscript has a high number of tables and figures, so we have try to simplify the information. The measurements of the un-blushed side are the best to characterize the differences, which is in accordance to the results obtained by Ayour et al. (2016). 

On the other hand, the coloration of the blush side is more or less intense depending on the cultivar (Huang et al., 2019). So, we consider that calculating the average value between the colour of the blush and the un-blush skin surface does not provide a real information.

Point 5. Lines 366, 368: Authors mention a scale from 0 to 8, while in materials and methods (Line 139) they are referring to a continuous scale from 0 to 10.

Response 5. The mistake has been corrected, the scale ranges from 0 to 8