Pre-Harvest Bagging of Table Grapes Reduces Accumulations of Agrochemical Residues and Increases Fruit Quality

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Journal- Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472)

Manuscript ID- agriculture-2530671

Pre-harvest fruit bagging limits the accumulation of agrochemical residuals in berries and improves fruit quality traits in table grape  

 

Overall comments

Manuscript is organized well, there is some odd wording that needs to be corrected.  I recommend that authors do not need to capitalize the treatment names throughout the manuscript (paper, non-woven, pergamin, control). In the methods, results, tables and figures, change mg/Kg to mg/kg.  In the results section there is not a need to discuss or mention the statistical analysis as that is defined in the materials and methods.  Weather data on rain and temperature needs to be added to the manuscript, in addition to information about the temp and humidity in the bags (if that data was taken)

 

 

Title

Change to “Pre-harvest fruit bagging of tables grapes limits accumulation of agrochemical residuals in berries and improves fruit quality”

 

Abstract

Line 13: Table grapes (Vitis vinifera)  

Line 18: change to Three bag types, paper, pergamin (cellulose-based material), and non-woven (composed of polypropylene fibers) bags were placed on grape clusters (phenological state BBCH 75) until harvest and compared with a control cluster without bagging.

Line 24: Change to All bagging treatments reduced agrochemical residue concentration as compared to the control in these varieties.

Line 26: However, results were dependent on bagging period which was more effective in the late-ripening variety. (I don’t know if this is a good conclusion statement since only 2 varieties were evaluated)

 

Keywords

Change to Vitis vinifera, texture, skin colour, pesticide residues, morphological, cluster  

 

Introduction

Need to reduce the introduction, removing general information, probably by 25%

Line 34: needs citation

Line 52: cite the scientific publications

Line 67: In regard to table grapes

Line 88: Vitis vinifera table grapes

Line 90: Three bag types, paper, pergamin (cellulose-based material), and non-woven (composed of polypropylene fibers) bags were placed on grape clusters (phenological state BBCH 75) until harvest and compared with a control cluster without bagging.

 

 

Materials and Methods

Create a section 2.2 for Bagging Treatments

Line 99: The experiment was done on two commercial

Line 101: two years (2021 and 2022 harvest seasons)

Line 109: start of Bagging Treatment section

Line 109: remove “distinct” , “the manufacturing” and “used”

Line 112: bags had the same dimensions

Line 120 remove “The”, “cultivar”

Line 121 instead to while, remove “the” and “cultivar”

Line 146 bunches per treatment were assessed with

Line 149 data for the berry skins with

Line 151 remove “for analytical complementarity,

Line 157: pretty sure Texture Tech is a US company, so check headquarters

Line 158: Two probes

Line 159: remove “distinct”

Line 165 the to A

Line 181: assay for agrochemical residual

Line 183 required

Line 193 spell out PTFE

Line 194 spell out and abbreviate GC-MS-MS

Line 196 500 uL (add space)

Line 218 remove “under consideration”

Line 230 change “among the single” to for both

Line 231 width, and weight

Line 231 remove by analysis of variance

Line 236 assessed to observed

Line 245 In regards

Line 245 are to were

Line 276 cultivars showed

Line 266 no differences

Line 280 wording is odd for although of any biological relevance , maybe “but not practically significant”

Line 285-286 remove first sentence

Line 286-287 The PCA revealed

Lines 295-298 no caps on berry, shot or puncture

Line 307 In regards

Line 307 results of agrochemical analysis

Lines 209-315 remove formulas

Line 316 determined to had

 

Discussion

Line 346 In regards to

Line 348 treatment improved

Line 352 What are the color expectations for these cultivars, needs discussion

Line 355 does not

Line 363 in regards

Lines 363-367 was humidity and temperature measured in the bag, need to be mentioned

Line 374 In regards

Line 374 results confirmed

Line 380 Analysis revealed (remove GC MS stuff)

Line 390-398 What was the pest quality of the clusters ?

 

Conclusions

Line 403 what is the duration of the treatment ?

Line 405-406  residual analysis allowed

 

 

References

Reduce the number of references to less than 30

 

Tables

All tables need to have expanded titles and foot notes so that they can be understood without referring to the manuscript, for the footnotes typically letters or numbers or used in the table to refer to the footnotes

 

On Table footnotes “Means with different letters for each attribute within a day are significantly different (p<0.05) according to Tukey’s Honest Significant Difference (HSD) test “

Tukey NOT Tuckey!

 

 

Add the following footnote to the tables

Three bag types, paper, pergamin (cellulose-based material), and non-woven (composed of polypropylene fibers) bags were placed on grape clusters (phenological state BBCH 75) until harvest and compared with a control cluster without bagging.

 

In the tables change Non_woven to Non-woven

 

Table 1: List of agrochemicals used after the application of bagging treatments (control, paper, pergamin, and non-woven) in Vitis vinifera table grape production (2021 and 2022)

 

Foot note for table 1

Three bag types, paper, pergamin (cellulose-based material), and non-woven (composed of polypropylene fibers) bags were placed on grape clusters (phenological state BBCH 75) until harvest and compared with a control cluster without bagging.

The dates of the treatments are reported as day/month. PHI (PreHarvest Intervall).

Mode of action abbreviation: S. (Systemic), C. (Contact), L.S. (Loco-Systemic). All data reported refer to the product labels.

 

 

Table 2

Fix title and footnote

Morphological attributes of Vitis vinifera table grape cultivars after application of bagging treatments (control, paper, pergamin, and non-woven) on grape clusters (2021 and 2022)

 

All the standard deviations should be to th 100^th decimal (some or to the 10^th), be consistent

Define Sign. Or spell out

In the first row, Bunch weight (no caps on the second words), some are cap and others not

 

 

Table 3

Same comments for Table 2

Define CIRG2

 

Table 4

Same comments for Table 2

Define TSS and spell out Brix

Define GAE

Again values to the100th decimal place or 10^th

Define Sign.  

 

Tables 5 and 6

Same comments as other tables

 

Figure 1

Add new Tukey footnote and define treatments

Box plot of the compression force (N) of Vitis vinifera table grape cultivars (Italia on left and Vittoria on right) after application of bagging treatments (control, paper, pergamin, and non-woven) on grape clusters (2021 and 2022)

 

Figure 2

New title needed

minor corrections needed, more concise sentences 

Author Response

Please find the reply to reviewer 1 in the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript investigated the effects of the pre-harvest fruit bagging technique (paper, pergamin and Non-woven) on tow white table grape cultivars, ‘Italia’ and ‘Vittoria’. They have monitored the changes in qualitaive traits and agrochemical residuals for two consecutive years. Overall, the experiment was well designed, conducted, and the conclusion was generally supported by the findings. Therefore, I suggested that the article may be accepted with some revisions and following suggestions are made to improve the article.

1. The “Abstract” section should be improved. For instance, the main results of this work need to be summarized with specific indicators. In the end of abstract, the scientific significance of this study should be demonstrated.

2. For introduction section, this part should be rewritten, for example, the 1^st paragraph should divided into severals paragraph, eg. First the significance of the pre-harvest furit bagging for fruits. Sencond, the research progress of pre-harvest fruit bagging, including affect what factors of fruits, such as the morphological and chemical parameters of fruits, as well as agrochmical residuals.

3. For results part, 1) it will be great if the author can show the pictures of these different bagging treatments when before or after the treatments. 2) Figure 2(a), please make it more clearer and beautiful.

4. For the conclusion part, please shorten this part.

no

Author Response

Response to reviewer 2

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript investigated the effects of the pre-harvest fruit bagging technique (paper, pergamin and Non-woven) on tow white table grape cultivars, ‘Italia’ and ‘Vittoria’. They have monitored the changes in qualitaive traits and agrochemical residuals for two consecutive years. Overall, the experiment was well designed, conducted, and the conclusion was generally supported by the findings. Therefore, I suggested that the article may be accepted with some revisions and following suggestions are made to improve the article.

 

1. The “Abstract” section should be For instance, the main results of this work need to be summarized with specific indicators. In the end of abstract, the scientific significance of this study should be demonstrated.

Thank you for the suggestion. The abstract has been modified according to your suggestions.

 

2. For introduction section, this part should be rewritten, for example, the 1 paragraph should divided into severals paragraph, eg. First the significance of the pre-harvest furit bagging for fruits. Sencond, the research progress of pre- harvest fruit bagging, including affect what factors of fruits, such as the morphological and chemical parameters of fruits, as well as agrochmical residuals.

Thank you for your suggestions. We have removed superfluous informations and made several edits in the introduction section. However also in agreement with the first reviewer suggestions we kept the paragraphs structure. In this way attention is first drawn to the problem of  fruit contamination by pesticide residues. Following this, the pre-harvest fruit bagging technique is introduced both for the improvement of quality traits and as a technique to limit the accumulation of pesticide residues in the fruit, and finally the aim of the work is described. We prefere to keep this structure since the aim of the work is to validate the potential of this technique in reducing the accumulation of pesticide residues in the berries without altering their main qualitative parameters.

 

For results part, 1) it will be great if the author can show the pictures of these different bagging treatments when before or after the treatments. 2) Figure 2(a), please make it    more clearer and beautiful.

Thank you for your suggestions.

1)  We do not have any informative picture of the treated bunches.

2) We modified figure 2 according to your suggestions

 

 

3. For the conclusion part, please shorten this

Thank you for the suggestion. The conclusion section has been shortened and focused on the results.

Reviewer 3 Report

The studies, carried out by the authors are currently relevant and correspond to subject of the journal. As a remark I want to note, that in Table 4 the values of "Titratable Acidity column ("Italy" cultivar) repeat the values, indicated in "TSS" column.

Also, in "Results" it is desirable to show an organoleptic evaluation of the grapes after using of insulating treatments, in particular, the consistency of  the pulp and skin, the presence/absence of the muskat aroma flavoir in "Italia" cvt. berries, the boiling tones in aroma.

Also is interesting, how does the commercial price of grapes change taking into account the use of insolating treatments?

Author Response

We are pleased that reviewer 3 appreciated our manuscript. 

All her/his suggestions have been taken into account in the revised version of the manuscript