In Fig. 3, the Pareto chart and the interaction plot of the
response variable particle size are reported. It can be observed that
chitosan (CS) and pectin (PEC) had a significant negative effect,
meaning that an increase in CS or PEC concentrations caused a
decrease of particle dimensions (Fig. 3a). A possible explanation of
this is that a high polymer concentration could be responsible for a
faster and more important ionic interaction between CS and PEC.
Such an effect was greater for CS than for PEC. On the contrary,
hyaluronic acid (HA) concentration did not affect particle size.