In this study, the concentration of three important micronutrients were analyzed in different milling fractions from three bread wheat cultivars from Serbia. The topic of the study is interesting due to the increasing interest in using grains/flours with enhanced micronutrients content, even in countries where flour fortification is a more simple and feasible approach to face malnutrition problems than biofortification. The authors should work in the points described below and improve significantly the quality of the paper.
-Page 4, lane 36: binding
-Page 4, lanes 47-52: I disagree with this statement. During fermentation, endogenous wheat phytate and from the microorganisms involved in the fermentation can degrade a significant amount of phytate. Because of this, bread phytate content is usually lower than phytate flour content. Check the literature and correct.
-Page 5: the objectives are not formulated clearly. a) and b) seems to be the same; the last objective should be formulated clearer too.
-Page 5, lane 57: the trial was un-replicated, right? Be more explicit about this point.
-Page 6: was the grain yield of the cultivars recorded? Grain yield is usually correlated with grain mineral contents.
-Materials & methods (M&M;) and Results section should be rearranged. The explanation of how some cultivars were selected for more analysis should be part of the Results section. M&M; should explain only the methods but not show the results obtained with these methods. Tables 1, 2 and 3 should be cited and commented in the Results section not in M&M.;
-The sections “Distribution of Fe, Zn and Mn in millings streams” and “Soluble micronutrients (Fe, Zn and Mn) in milling streams” are too descriptive and do not contribute anything new in the field. The discussion should be improved, and it should be explained and discussed better what is the aim of making this analysis and what is the utility of the data generated. That is clear in the section “Contents of micronutrients (Fe, Zn and Mn) in white flours”, but not in these sections.
-In the conclusions section, authors suggest that breeding programs should develop new cultivars as NS Todorka. But they do not give any clue about how to achieve that. Should breeding programs carry out analysis of mineral contents and soluble mineral contents in all the breeding lines? That is not possible. The authors should try to explain how to achieve that more easily. Besides, the study lacks any correlation analysis to check if any parameter is correlated with the interesting traits. For example: was TGW correlated with mineral content? Is there any association between ash content and soluble mineral content in the flour? Those type of questions are interesting and are necessary to plan the right breeding strategy.
-Tables and figures of the paper are not attractive for the reader. The tables are large and full of numbers. The figures are grey, with the font size too small. Although the tables and figures are correct, I strongly recommend the authors to make new versions of he figures and tables to make them more attractive to the reader. Table 5 is particularly not attractive table. It is full of numbers and it is not easy to figure it out what part is for Fe, Zn, or Mn.
-In the summary authors mentioned: “Summary: This study investigates distribution of three micronutrients in milling streams of three common wheat cultivars to estimate nutritive value of white flours and bread.” I think authors are extrapolating too much the data. Not a single piece of bread was baked in this study, so it is difficult to take conclusions about bread nutritive value. Bread-making is a complex process and lot of changes occur during it. So, the authors should be more cautious when speaking about bread and when extrapolating the data that they obtained in flour analysis.

The caption of the Figure 1 should be wrong. I do not know what micronutrient is showed in that figure. And I cannot follow this figure and the rest of PCA figures and the conclusions that the authors took based on these figures such as “Total (T) iron of whole kernel was positively related with ash content and close to T phosphorus (P).” Where is iron or phosphorus together in those figures? Or “Also, T phosphorus showed strong negative relationship with T Mn, Zn and S Zn which were closed to S Mn and P”. Where is that showed? Zn and phosphorus (phytate) are usually positively associated in wheat grain. How is possible that a strong negative relationship was found? These PCA figures need to be much clearer.

“As stated above, the improvement of micronutrients intake is certainly obtained by consumption of whole-milled or brown breads instead of white bread.” I do not agree with this suggestion. See Eagling et al. (2014), which is included in your references. White flour may have more iron available than brown ones.

“The first suggestion for the improvement of bioavailability of Fe ad Zn is the production of special high-ash flour from milling streams rich in soluble content of microelements such as B4, M4, M5 and M6 from wheat cultivars such as NS Todorka.” So, what we should do with the other milling fractions?

Phytate is degraded in both conventional and sourdough fermentation. It is good that authors highlight the sourdough fermentation, but conventional fermentation also works. So change this because the way it is written in introduction and discussion it seems that sourdough fermentation in the only possibility. It may be also useful to mention that depending on the wheat cultivar the endogenous phytase activity could be different.

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