Hyperaccumulators for Potentially Toxic Elements: A Scientometric Analysis

Dongming Zhang,Jialong Lv,Lana Filipović,Miles Dyck,Hailong He,Vilim Filipović

doi:10.3390/agronomy11091729

Abstract

Phytoremediation is an effective and low-cost method for the remediation of soil contaminated by potentially toxic elements (metals and metalloids) with hyperaccumulating plants. This study analyzed hyperaccumulator publications using data from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) (1992–2020). We explored the research status on this topic by creating a series of scientific maps using VOSviewer, HistCite Pro, and CiteSpace. The results showed that the total number of publications in this field shows an upward trend. Dr. Xiaoe Yang is the most productive researcher on hyperaccumulators and has the broadest international collaboration network. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (China), Zhejiang University (China), and the University of Florida (USA) are the top three most productive institutions in the field. China, the USA, and India are the top three most productive countries. The most widely used journals were the International Journal of Phytoremediation, Environmental Science and Pollution Research, and Chemosphere. Co-occurrence and citation analysis were used to identify the most influential publications in this field. In addition, possible knowledge gaps and perspectives for future studies are also presented.

Highlights

Toxic elements (PTEs), including metals and metalloids, are important pollutants originating from the mineralization of parent materials or human activities, and their concentration in the environment increases year by year [1]
The frequently reported “blood lead incident” [2], “cadmium rice” [3], and “heavy metal contaminated vegetables” [4] are all associated with Potentially toxic elements (PTEs) pollution
HistCite Pro is a more concise and convenient version of the Agronomy 2021, 11, 1729 bibliographic coupling to generate a visual atlas for the analysis of journals, authors, countries, institutions, and keywords [46]

Summary

Introduction

Toxic elements (PTEs), including metals and metalloids, are important pollutants originating from the mineralization of parent materials (geogenic origin) or human activities (anthropogenic origin), and their concentration in the environment increases year by year [1]. Increased concentrations of PTEs in the environment pose a severe threat to human, animal, and plant health. The frequently reported “blood lead incident” [2], “cadmium rice” [3], and “heavy metal contaminated vegetables” [4] are all associated with PTE pollution. Phytoremediation is an efficient and environmentally friendly remediation strategy for PTEs pollution [8,9], which can be used for the reclamation of contaminated soils without disturbing soil fertility and biodiversity [10,11]. Hyperaccumulators are considered a green alternative to solve the issue of PTEs pollution and are a more practical approach for large-scale applications

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