Very High Food Plant Diversity among Ethnic Groups in Northern Thailand

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Panyadee and colleagues present a review of plant use among a range of ethnic groups in Northern Thailand. They find a surprisingly high number of used plant species and some interesting patterns when comparing the different ethnic groups. I enjoyed reading the study and think it will be of broad interest to the ethnobotanical community.

However, a few issues should be addressed:

1) The raw data for the study should be published properly (on dryad or a similar database). The supplement presented by the authors is not raw data. With those tables, I am unable to track down for example the usage of Mukia maderaspatana (which by the way is now called Cucumis maderaspatanus) or any other specific plant species. It would be good to make a table available that allows the reader directly to search for a particular plant species and find in which of the many analysed papers the authors detected the actual reference to this particular species. Such a database could then be used in follow-up studies (which are suggested by the authors) but not the summary tables now presented in the supplement.

2) I missed some information on cultivar diversity. This was perhaps not the focus of the study but it still seems important to mention somewhere in the text that some taxa like Musa are probably cultivated in lots of different varieties and that this is another precious heritage of the different ethnic groups.

Some typos:

l. 80 - "we aim to answer"

l. 213 - "seven ethnic groups"

l. 412/413 - "presents and discusses"

l. 417 - "different fields"

signed Hanno Schaefer, Jan. 05, 2023

Author Response

1) The raw data for the study should be published properly...

We are afraid that we cannot provide the use-information as the reviewer suggest along with this article since more than 70% of the information are published in Thai language. Therefore, it is required time and effort to translate these data.  However, the authors are willing to provide the data for a species, genus, or family to any readers. Therefore, we added this phrase to Supplementary Materials section: "Most use data used for analyzing in this article are published in Thai language. For the readers who require the use data of specific plant groups, kindly contact the corresponding author for such data."

2) I missed some information on cultivar diversity....

Unfortunately, the information of the cultivars is not provided in most ethnobotanical studies which focus mostly on the species level. Therefore, the analysis of diversity of cultivar is not included in this article. However, we agree with the reviewer that this is important issue and is missing from the ethnobotanical study in Thailand. Therefore, we have point out, additionally, this issue in the Conclusion section "

Despite a great number of species compiled in this study, it should be noted that some cultivated taxa are probably presented in different cultivars, e.g., banana (Musa spp.), mango (Mangifera indica), legumes and pulses, or taro (Colocasia esculenta). This is another precious hidden heritage of the different ethnic groups which require further study."

3) Some typos

We have corrected the typos which are mentioned by the reviewer

Reviewer 2 Report

the article provides interesting findings in form of meta-analyses on food plant diversity among ethnic groups in Northern parts of Thailand. data gathering and analyses are relevant. the locality has a rich biodiversity.  I have made some comments and language problems in the attached file. I think some photos of these plants and the process of food-making make the article more valuable and vary attractive.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

• I have made some comments and language problems in the attached file
  • We have corrected the typos as suggested by the reviewer. We really appreciate his/her inspections.
• I think some photos of these plants and the process of food-making make the article more valuable and very attractive.
  • We agree that the photos could make the article more attractive. However, this is a review article and we afriad that we could not find proper photos of plants or the food-making process for the article. We are sorry that we cannot add this part to the article now.