The Effects of Irrigation with Diverse Wastewater Sources on Heavy Metal Accumulation in Kinnow and Grapefruit Samples and Health Risks from Consumption
, Naunain Mehmood 3,4, Hafsa Memona 5, Shahzad Akhtar 1 and Ilker Ugulu 6,*
Hakan Şevik
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors address an important problem that both academics and agricultural companies are interested in: the accumulation of heavy metals in products. The paper contains enough background information and introduction, and all relevant research is correctly cited. The manuscript's organization is very good and in accordance with the requirements of the journal. Data and experiments are appropriate. Methods are explained in detail enough for another researcher to reproduce them. The results are shown in Figures and Tables clearly.
Overall, I don't have any serious issues with the article, although there are a few minor issues that could be addressed.
11. I advise avoid using abbreviations in the Abstract.
22. Line 51 – The abbreviation "EC" is used without further explanation; line 133 provides an explanation.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The map can be read. Please use a revolution map.
Some of the references are old. Please add some new (2021-2023) references.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The article is basically well written and contains correctly formulated statements, an introductory part, defining hypotheses, overview of results, etc. But there are typos or ambiguities in many places that need to be checked and corrected.
My main comments are about the Discussion chapter. And this in the use of comparative literature, where other professional articles and works of authors are used to a significant extent. This needs to be adjusted. It is possible to keep the works of the authors and consider them as additional sources of information for the given area. But there is a need to use other works from other regions, which relate to the contamination of citrus and/or similar crops. Especially in the description of the results for the elements Pb and Ni, there are mainly citations of the work of the author team.
A second problem identified in the Discussion chapter that makes it difficult to compare contamination values from this study and from other studies is that many of the results for comparison are in different units. I recommend converting the presented values to the units used by the authors in their own study. And thus enable the reader to find their way around more quickly.
E.g. on lines – 474, 482, 493, 523, 524.
Other recommendations:
Keywords - add "heavy metals"
Lines 50 to 54 – Practically two identical sentences follow each other. One statement is made in two slightly different sentences in a row.
Line 109 - fix index "km2"
Line 284 - I think it should be "mean value" instead of "mean quantity"
Table 6 – the table shows the abbreviations of elements other than those mentioned in the related paragraphs of the article (lines 290 to 296 and lines 302 to 303). Must check and fix!
Line 355 - In the description of the results there is an abbreviation for the element Cu, but I assume it is the element Cr, which is one of the mentioned within the article. The element Cu is not included in Table 9 to which the text refers.
Line 426 - the element mark "Fe" is mentioned in the text, but it is not mentioned in the article. Apparently a typo.
Line 446 - the abbreviation "WW" is given, which I could not find further in the text. Shouldn't this be the abbreviation "SW"?
Line 449 – “C. sinensis” – change the format to italics.
Line 484 – values for the element Zn from the literature are also given here. However, the authors do not report any of their own results, so it is a redundant statement with nothing to compare it with. This also applies to the data for the elements Mn and Zn on line 511 and Co on line 526. Although the results are interesting, they are redundant in this paper.
On line 501, the authors present the results of the determination of the element Cr in another study. These are practically significantly higher than the values measured in the authors' study. I recommend adding some evaluation of why they are so significantly different, including the use of information from the cited article.
None
Author Response
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