Global Research Trend Analysis of Osmanthus fragrans Based on Bibliometrix

Abstract

Osmanthus fragrans is the ornamental and practical excellent garden tree featured with greening, beautification, and fragrance in one, and has been domesticated in China for 2500 years. Besides, an increasing number of papers on O. fragrans have been published so far, but these contributions have not been analyzed comprehensively. Considering that, in this research, a bibliometric methodology is adopted on documents related to O. fragrans obtained from the WoS database. The study demonstrated the main countries and institutions in terms of this field. Among them, the Chinese research on O. fragrans is in a leading position in the world. Regarding the specialization, the institution ranking is led by the Nanjing Forestry University, Henan University, and Zhejiang University. Apart from that, analysis on the keywords also highlighted the lines of research associated with plant functionality (e.g., antioxidant, antifungal activity, and anti-inflammatory activities), natural products (e.g., carotenoids, aroma, flavonoids, essential oils, phenylethanoid glycosides, and salidroside), and molecular biology (e.g., genetic diversity, transcription factors, and phylogeny). The results from this study also revealed that there is a lack of research on the production mechanism of floral fragrance and the flower color regulation mechanism in O. fragrans. Moreover, the aroma and flower color are gradually developing into the main areas of research on O. fragrans. It is also expected that future research in this field will focus on biochemistry and biomolecules.