A bibliometric analysis of carbon exchange in global drylands

Trends in Seed Priming Research in the Past 30 Years Based on Bibliometric Analysis

Seed priming (SP) treatments are widely used in agriculture and restoration to improve seed germination and seedling vigor. Although there exists a considerable amount of scientific literature on SP, it has seldom undergone visual and quantitative analyses. To gain insights into the patterns observed in SP research over the last three decades, we conducted a bibliometric analysis using the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCI-E) database, aiming to minimize the similarity score in plagiarism detection. This analysis offers a thorough examination of yearly publications, temporal patterns in keyword usage, the top-performing journals, authors, institutions, and countries within the field of SP. Our research findings suggest a steady annual increase of 10.59% in the volume of SP publications, accompanied by a significant upward trajectory in the average citations received per paper annually. According to the analysis of keywords, it was found that "priming" and "germination" emerged as the most frequently used terms in the field of SP research. Seed Science and Technology ranked first among the top journals, and Plant Physiology had greater influence in the field of SP in terms of number of citations. The majority of the top 10 productive institutions were situated in developing countries. In addition, these nations exhibited the highest volume of published works and citations. Our analysis revealed a shift in research focus within the field of SP over the past three decades, transitioning from agricultural science to encompass plant science and environmental science. With the growing recognition of SP's research across different disciplines, there exist abundant prospects for international and interdisciplinary partnerships, collaborative organizations, and progress in this field.

Plant root plasticity during drought and recovery: What do we know and where to go?

AIMS

Drought stress is one of the most limiting factors for agriculture and ecosystem productivity. Climate change exacerbates this threat by inducing increasingly intense and frequent drought events. Root plasticity during both drought and post-drought recovery is regarded as fundamental to understanding plant climate resilience and maximizing production. We mapped the different research areas and trends that focus on the role of roots in plant response to drought and rewatering and asked if important topics were overlooked.

METHODS

We performed a comprehensive bibliometric analysis based on journal articles indexed in the Web of Science platform from 1900-2022. We evaluated a) research areas and temporal evolution of keyword frequencies, b) temporal evolution and scientific mapping of the outputs over time, c) trends in the research topics analysis, d) marked journals and citation analysis, and e) competitive countries and dominant institutions to understand the temporal trends of root plasticity during both drought and recovery in the past 120 years.

RESULTS

Plant physiological factors, especially in the aboveground part (such as "photosynthesis", "gas-exchange", "abscisic-acid") in model plants Arabidopsis, crops such as wheat and maize, and trees were found to be the most popular study areas; they were also combined with other abiotic factors such as salinity, nitrogen, and climate change, while dynamic root growth and root system architecture responses received less attention. Co-occurrence network analysis showed that three clusters were classified for the keywords including 1) photosynthesis response; 2) physiological traits tolerance (e.g. abscisic acid); 3) root hydraulic transport. Thematically, themes evolved from classical agricultural and ecological research via molecular physiology to root plasticity during drought and recovery. The most productive (number of publications) and cited countries and institutions were situated on drylands in the USA, China, and Australia. In the past decades, scientists approached the topic mostly from a soil-plant hydraulic perspective and strongly focused on aboveground physiological regulation, whereas the actual belowground processes seemed to have been the elephant in the room. There is a strong need for better investigation into root and rhizosphere traits during drought and recovery using novel root phenotyping methods and mathematical modeling.

Seed Traits Research Is on the Rise: A Bibliometric Analysis from 1991–2020

Seed traits (ST) influence seedling establishment, population dynamics, community composition and ecosystem function and reflect the adaptability of plants and the environmental conditions they experienced. There has been a historical and global accumulation of studies on ST, but with few pertaining to visual and quantitative analyses. To understand the trends in the field of ST research in the past 30 years, we conducted a bibliometric analysis based on the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCI-E) database. The analysis provided annual publications, time trends for keywords, the most productive journals, authors, institutions and countries, and a comprehensive overview of the ST field. Our results showed that in the past 30 years, the number of publications in ST research has increased at an average annual growth rate of 9.1%, while the average number of citations per paper per year showed a rapid increase–slow increase–decrease trend. Keyword analysis showed that “germination” was the most popular research section. Crop Science ranked first among the top journals and Theoretical and Applied Genetics had greater influence in this area and more citations than other journals. The 10 most productive institutions were mostly located in the United States, China and Australia. Furthermore, the three countries also had the largest number of publications and citations. Our analysis showed that the research interests in ST have evolved from genetics and agricultural science to ecological research over the last thirty years; as more fields embrace ST research, there are opportunities for international and interdisciplinary collaborations, cooperative institutions and new advances in the field.