Is the Commercialization of Wild Plants by Organic Producers in Austria Neglected or Irrelevant?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The present manuscript was aimed to understand if organic gathering is carelessly, neglected or irrelevant in Austria, a country which does not provide statistics on wild plant gathering, organic or not.

In my opinion the topic is suitable for the publication in Sustainability.

The abstract is complete and describes briefly the main results and conclusions.

The manuscript is properly prepared. However, in my opinion it requires a minor revision before be suitable for publication, addressing the following aspects:

I suggest to added a definition for better understanding the distinction between ‘wild’ and ‘domesticated’ plants, since there could be many intermediate stages between the use of wild plants and true domestication. Indeed, many wild species can occasionally be grown and some cultivated plants, that are not completely domesticated, sometimes grow like wild vegetables.

Lines 60-71: Frequent concerns associated with commercial wild plant gathering are destructive gathering techniques, overharvesting or exploitation of workforce… Another concern regards the potential presence of toxic elements in wild edible plants and mushrooms gathered from urban and peri-urban areas. I suggest to insert in the bibliography and comment in the introduction following papers:

Işıloğlu, M., Yılmaz, F., & Merdivan, M. (2001). Concentrations of trace elements in wild edible mushrooms. Food Chemistry, 73(2), 169-175.

Renna, M., Cocozza, C., Gonnella, M., Abdelrahman, H., & Santamaria, P. (2015). Elemental characterization of wild edible plants from countryside and urban areas. Food chemistry, 177, 29-36.

I also suggest to revise conclusions since this section is too long: citations and some aspects can be moved to the discussion section. Moreover, authors could better highlight results of their research in relation to the sustainability.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1

Thank you for your time dedicated to reviewing the manuscript and your assessment!

We had already included a paragraph on the distinction of wild and domesticated plant species in the manuscript. But while we had this paragraph in the limitations section before we now shifted a part of it to the end of the introduction to make it more visible. Done!

We included the topic of food safety and the suggested references in the introduction. Done!

In the conclusions, we deleted those parts including references and added a comment concerning the sustainability of gathering activities. Done!

Reviewer 2 Report

Very interesting and novel assessment to understand the extent of wild plant gathering today, and the association with organic agriculture.  The study demonstrates how reported data bases can be used to identify trends in society.  Although only a sampling, I believe the sampling is representative of the use of wild products in our food and specialty markets.  While this is not a landmark discovery, it is a valuable presentation of the current practice.  I have noted a few places where the grammar could be improved, but overall, very well done.

Line 353.  Used to walk…

Line 410.  The second typical, but much less widespread, way…

Line 432:  reword.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you for your time dedicated to reviewing the manuscript, your assessment and suggestions for grammatical improvement!