Bibliometric analysis of studies in medicinal and aromatic plants for rural development

Abstract

Abstract. Medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) are of interest for human uses from the prehistoric times to the present day. Importance and demand for medicinal and aromatic plants are always continuous. The plant-based drugs, health products, pharmaceuticals, food additives, and cosmetics may contribute to economics for the people living in rural areas as an alternative economic value chain for developing countries. The strategy and priority for selection of some elite plants for their conservation, cultivation, processing, and standardization may promote a new way of livelihood in rural areas. However, quantitative data are lacking on the profile of published researches regarding rural development and MAPs across the world. The object of the study was to examine the profile of original and review articles under the topic of rural development using bibliometric analysis. The VOSviewer tool was used to visualize the results. The documents including "rural development in "Article title, Abstract, Keywords", but limited to containing the topic "medicinal and aromatic plants" were extracted from the Scopus database. Briefly, the research was done using rural development in "Article title, Abstract, Keywords" and then 70,745 documents were retrieved. The second step was limitation of the results to "medicinal and aromatic plants". In this context, 113 documents relevant and available peer-reviewed publications were analysed. According to the systematic analysis, 4169 terms, 346 authors, 384 keywords and 56 countries were determined. The annual trends of publications in the field of the research, considering the number of documents, number of authors, levels of collaborations among authors and countries, yearly publications and core publishing journals were analysed. Along with the results, medicinal plants, Himalaya, conservation, Ethnobotany, Nepal, traditional knowledge, rural development, sustainable development, domestication, Ethnomedicine, livelihood, non-timber forest products, value chain and marketing are of the most pronounced keywords and the discussion was made on those keywords. Of these studies, India, the United States, Italy, Nepal and South Africa were the predominant five countries in dissemination of the documents. Finally, the study was concluded with future outlooks and recommendations.

Bibliometric profile of graduate theses regarding “Medical and aromatic plants” in Türkiye

“…Three hundred and ninety-seven different keywords were used in master's theses and ninety seven different keywords were used in doctoral theses. The most often used keyword was medicinal plants in studies conducted by Kulak (2018), Rahaman et al (2021), Rohit (2022) and Trivedi et al (2022) and the results are similar to this study.…”

“…Salmeron-Manzano et al (2020) More than 100 000 studies on medicinal plants indexed in the Scopus database were analyzed using the bibliometric method. Kulak (2018) A bibliometric analysis of 113 documents containing the subjects of rural development and medicinal aromatic plants was carried out, and the data were retrieved from the Scopus database.…”

Market Trends of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in Italy: Future Scenarios Based on the Delphi Method

“…The trade in MAPs leads to an increase in the agricultural GDP of all the nations that have an agricultural basis or natural vegetation-rich regions. Indeed, this type of crop has been recommended in rural regions as a means of increasing revenues and resolving agro-food preservation difficulties [77]. The importance of MAPs for rural areas has also been pointed out in Italy where they occur in 20.6% of the territory and interest 47.2% of the population [16].…”

Forest-based bioeconomy in sub-Saharan Africa: Looking at benefits and burdens from a social sustainability standpoint

“…Komayire 2017;Sanou et al 2019) and efforts to make seeds and seedlings accessible to farmers must be made (Odoi et al 2019). The cultivation of species like bamboo (Endalamaw et al 2013;Ingram and Tieguhong 2013;Lin et al 2019) is common, but efforts also visibly expand to lesser-known plants like allanblackia, a tree species whose seeds produce edible oil (Jamnadass et al 2009;Leakey and Damme 2014;Mpanda et al 2014), indigenous and exotic fruits (Jamnadass et al 2011; Rankoana 2016), medicinal trees and plants (Geldenhuys 2004;van Niekerk and Wynberg 2012;Cunningham et al 2014;Kulak 2018), trees and plants supporting the production of spices (Meaton et al 2015), snails (Ndoye et al 2016) and edible larvae (Meutchieye and Niassy 2016; Bomolo et al 2019).…”

“…Developing new markets, ensuring the integration of all actors across the value chains, and adding value to forest products can all improve forest-dependent communities' livelihoods, by increasing the profitability of their activities, or creating alternative income and employment. For example, considering plant-based drugs, health products, pharmaceuticals, food additives and cosmetics alongside traditional uses of forest products, or considering neglected and underutilized species, may contribute to rural incomes (Pitalounani et al 2017;Kulak 2018). Value chains were analyzed for products like bamboo (Ingram and Tieguhong 2013;Mekonnen et al 2014), gums and resins (Mekonnen et al 2013), miracle berries (Arowosoge and Popoola 2006), snails (Ndoye et al 2016), oily NTFPs (Roques et al 2019), frankincense (Abtew et al 2012), baobab (Jäckering et al 2019), coconut wine (Njugu 2013) and rubber trees (Iyayi et al 2008), among others.…”