Discrimination of Tunisian Honey by Mineral and Trace Element Chemometrics Profiling

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Discrimination of Tunisian honey by mineral and trace element chemometrics profiling is very interesting and well written. The manuscript authors the introduction section presented the current state of knowledge on the experimental design. The topic is a very new, because touch a problem of current quality of honey and it mineral composition.

The Introduction section includes all necessary information about examined objects and problems.

The collected experimental material and used methods do not raise any objections.

I have only one remark to Results presentation in Table 3

Authors claim (in sub-section 2.7. Statistical analysis) that statistical elaboration was made. Please add the letters of homogenous groups every there where statistical signification was detected.

The discussion section presents a very good comparison of the obtained results with other results available in the data basis.

General opinion: I think, that presented manuscript is a very valuable with extremely high scientific value.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is dealing with discrimination of Tunisian honey by mineral and trace element analysis. The analytical procedure is in high quality. However, the statistical evaluation must be improved. 

Chapter 2.2. – it will be good to mark the samples in geographical map.
Line 2.7. – The data were autoscaled to provide equal importance. I am not sure if the “autoscale” is appropriate scaling method. The pareto scaling and/or logarithmic transformation of data will be more appropriate.  
Figure 1 and 2: The labels in plots are to small to read. It will be better to increase the font. 
Line 228: How was the cluster made? There is no information dealing with Cluster analysis or other method where groups must be defined (supervised statistical evaluation).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This study reports the levels of elements in honey from several regions of Tunisia. The data would provide important background information and be valuable when we consider the element exposure through food intake. Though the sample size is not big, study design, discussion and data reliability are very good. I don’t see any scientific problem nor flaw in logic. This manuscript, therefore, needs minor revision.

L69        I don’t think you can make 100 mg/l of standard mixture by diluting 19 standard solutions of each standard. Please describe clearly how you make the solution.

L95        What is “Re standard solution”?

L116      If you can provide the data on external validation, the data would be more reliable. Did you analyse some certified reference materials, e.g. SRM of NIST, or participate in an inter-lab calibration exercise?

L145      Did you check the data distribution? I am not sure if “mean” represent the general situation of intake.

Figure 1 and 2      Letters in the figures are too small.

Table 4   “Racommended” should be “recommended”.

L262 and others   “Capite” should be “capita”.

L263-269             This part needs detailed information. Study design and methods should be described in Materials and Methods section.

L272-275             To me, this is surprisingly high because only honey consumption may contribute about 10% of reference level. If we have other contaminated food items in several principal diet, exposure will easily exceed the limits

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I am satisfied with revised version of the manuscript