Trends and Features of Agroforestry Research Based on Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

The world is faced with dual challenges to ensure food security for its large and still growing population and to mitigate climate change. It is necessary to develop more diversified and multifunction agricultural systems to address the challenges. Therefore, as a reasonable land use practice, agroforestry has become the hotspot in scientific research in recent decades. This study performed quantitative and qualitative analyses of agroforestry research published between 1990 and 2018 based on bibliometric methods, expecting to guidance for further research in order to scientifically understand of the trends and features of agroforestry research over time and by region. A total of 4204 publications were obtained from Web of Science. The results show that the research interest in the agroforestry field has significantly enhanced, and about 139 countries have been involved with the research in this field. These publications cover 66 subject categories and a great diversity research theme. Since 1990, the popular keywords in agroforestry research have been changed from “Intercropping”, “Alley cropping”, and “Multipurpose trees” to “Carbon sequestration”, “Ecosystem service”, and “Climate change”. This indicates that the theme of agroforestry research has changed and the research scale is gradually expanding. Furthermore, agroforestry research themes vary with regions, since different regions have various requirements on the function of the agroforestry system. In the end, given the current trend of agroforestry science, we conclude a list of research potentials of agroforestry in the future.

Agroforestry a pathway to climate smart agribusiness: Lessons to smallholder farmers

“…Indeed, it is a suitable land management system to reduce gender inequalities related to natural resource access (Wekesa et al, 2018). In light of addressing the livelihood situations in developing countries, agroforestry also plays an important role in the livelihoods of poor people (Liu et al, 2019). Agroforestry is a pathway toward more resilient livelihoods for millions of African farmers whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change and land degradation (Mbow et al, 2014).…”

A Scientometric Analysis of Worldwide Intercropping Research Based on Web of Science Database between 1992 and 2020

“…There are many studies reviewing various aspects of intercropping, including yield stability [24][25][26], water and nutrient utilization [27][28][29][30][31], biodiversity [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39], allelopathy [17,[40][41][42][43][44], agroforestry [29,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51], or species-dependent intercropping such as cereallegume or maize-based intercropping [7,31,52,53]. However, no study has investigated the overall research tends and features of intercropping.…”

“…However, no study has investigated the overall research tends and features of intercropping. Previous studies [45][46][47][48]54,55] have shown that scientometrics is a powerful tool for quantitative and statistical demonstration of research trends and features of a certain topic. The objective of this study is to quantitatively analyze the growth and evolution of intercropping research based on the scientometric method based on the Web of Science database.…”

Which Socio-economic Conditions Drive the Selection of Agroforestry at the Forest Frontier?

“…However, the uneven and relatively slow uptake of agroforestry in Central and Latin America (Dagang and Nair 2003;Frey et al 2012a;Somarriba et al 2012) suggests that not all farmers deem these systems to be a desirable land-use option (Do et al 2020). While the ecological advantages of agroforestry have been widely documented (e.g., Jose 2009), the socio-economic disadvantages that may constitute barriers to adoption have received less attention in the literature (Liu et al 2019;Montambault and Alavalapati 2005). More research to better understand the socio-economic aspects of agroforestry is therefore needed, to help identify conditions that may make agroforestry more attractive for farmers.…”