Tritium Behavior from Vine to Wine

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript titled "Tritium behavior from vine to wine" suggests an interesting way to evaluate the quality of wines and the information they present may be interesting for readers of this Journal; However, the manuscript as presented has many deficiencies that must be addressed to improve the understanding of the information they disclose. In this sense, I note what I consider should be improved in the manuscript:

In the Abstract: In my opinion, you should put the objective of the study and at the end a small conclusion. Please improve the wording of this section.

The introduction section does not clearly define the general objective of the work, please write the general objective.

In the material and methods section there should be a subsection on statistical analysis of the data obtained during the research. I suggest that you include it and describe all the procedures used in the interpretation of results; For example, they describe Pearson coefficients between atmospheric variables with tritium, and there is no corresponding section that describes these analyses.

In results and discussion, the Figures show error or standard deviation bars but it is not clear why or why they use them, they must explain in the statistical analysis section how they present the results and those values ​​are the product of so many repetitions, with the which these dispersion values ​​are obtained.

In general, the results need a better interpretation as a whole, explaining more clearly why the variations that occur each year are due and how these results can be interpreted in daily practice. It is not clear what they are pursuing with this investigation. Additionally, discussions of the results are scarce; Therefore, the explanation of the results must be considerably improved.

In section 4 of conclusions, it does not present specific conclusions according to the results obtained; In fact, what it presents are more results and discussions, but not conclusions. Therefore, they must change the information that is being presented as a conclusion to the previous section and write what the answer to the general objective is (which by the way is not clearly defined).

Most of the references are old, I suggest you update and increase the information with more recent references.

Additionally, you should pay attention to the following specific details that I point out:

L27-29: It is important that this information be supported by some scientific background, please provide the reference that supports this statement.

L163-170: In my opinion, this information should be presented in the material and methods section, since it is the geographical description and climatic conditions where the study was carried out. I suggest changing it to another section.

L180-181: "(1 Tritium Unit, TU, is one atom of tritium to 1018 atoms of hydrogen)" this description must go in section 2.3 where the description of the methodology used is made and where it must describe how the results will be interpreted .

L296-298: This is an incongruent paragraph in this section, please review and delete or correct it.

L376-378: Reference [5] has no year of publication. Please correct it.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article shows tritium levels in vines, grapes, and wine measured in two different ways. Therefore, the authors should address different methods and analyses of tritium in the introduction and always compare the results obtained with those measured by other methods in the discussion.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In this manuscript, Carmen Varlam et.al. from measuring tritium content in grape and wine using TFWT and OBT, it was confirmed that the behavior of the two forms (TFWT and OBT) was related to the concentration of tritium in the air and precipitation. Overall, some concerns need to be addressed before further consideration. Some comments are listed as follows:

 

1. According to page 5, “The monthly recorded temperature during 2019-2023, varied between 0.30C, usually in January, and 24.6˚C in July, figure 2.” According to the article, I think it should be 0.3 °C here, not 0.3 C. Please confirm the results. If there is no objection, please explain the reasons.

 

2. According to page 6, “Its values varied between 43.4% (April 2020) and 59% (January 2019) during 2019-2021, when the annual precipitation was below 635 mm, less than 9% lower than the established precipitation characteristic of this location.” I don't understand how to get the data. Please explain how to get the data.

 

3. According to Figure 4, the tritium activity of TFWT in May is ≥10 TU, but it is stated in the text that it is 6.3+/-1.6 TU. The two interpretations are inconsistent. Please confirm the results. If there is no objection, please explain the reasons.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript titled "Tritium behavior from vine to wine" considerably improved the quality and understanding of some sections with the modifications made; However, in my opinion the conclusions section continues to be a continuity of the results and discussions, the conclusions must be concrete and respond to the hypothesis and the stated objective. I believe that by improving the conclusions section, the manuscript may be suitable for publication in this Journal.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your comments. I agree with your suggestions, therefore I am making the following changes:

Chapter 3. Results and discussions

1. We added the following paragraph: “The activity of tritium varies according to the types of matrices. According to IRSN data [30], the ranges of activities of free tritium (HTO) and organically bound tritium (OBT) measured in fruits, in areas not influenced by nuclear activities are between 8 and 150 TU, both for HTO and OBT. The recorded values for TFWT and OBT for vine and wine are in agreement with the literature.”, page 9, lines 316-320
2. We deleted the next paragraph, page 9, lines 321-329
3. We added the following paragraph “A general view of tritium activity from ethanol wine, compared with the tritium level of the average precipitation of each studied year is presented in figure 10. As it can be seen all tritium values – precipitation and ethanol from wine - are around an average value of 11 TU. According to the IAEA network “Isotopes in Precipitations” [29], the temporal evolution of tritium concentration in precipitations around the continental Nordic Hemisphere, was influenced by the nuclear tests, with tritium concentrations increasing by up to three orders of magnitude between the early and late 1960s. In 2008, the measured activities varied between 8 and 35 TU in rainwater, but the reference value quoted for Northern Hemisphere rainwater is 5 TU in the winter and double in the summer [29]. The recorded tritium level of precipitation over the 5 years of observation was 10.6 +/- 1.5 TU, the typical value for the inland Europe. The recorded tritium level of wine ethanol over the 5 years of observation was 12.9 +/- 1.6 TU, close to that of the precipitation if taking into account the measurement uncertainty.”, page 10, lines 330-342
4. Figure 10 was moved from the conclusions to this chapter, page 10, lines 343-344

Chapter 4. Conclusions

1. We deleted part of the first paragraph, page 10, lines 348-357
2. We added the following paragraph “Considering all five years of measurements, one can observe higher values of OBT tritium levels in leaves, and lower values in branches (without considering the measurement uncertainty) due to the overall mechanism of tritium transfer from the environment to plants summarized as the HTO uptake. The foliar uptake of tritium from the atmosphere influenced the tritium level in leaves, and the root uptake of tritium from the soil influenced the tritium level in branches. Another interesting behavior is the decreasing values of OBT tritium levels for leaves and grapes in November, a constant decrease over all five years proving the influence of exchangeable organic tritium lost by the drying leaves and grapes.”, page 11, lines 376-384
3. We deleted the next paragraph line 385-388 and figure 10.
4. We make some minor English spelling changes.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors adequately answered all the questions. Thus, the article can be accepted.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your help in improving the paper.