Mapping the research trends on blockchain technology in food and agriculture industry: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Blockchain is an undeniably ingenious leading technology that has attracted the attention of academics and practitioners in different industries and disciplines. Due to the increasing interest of academic scholars in agri-food supply chain, this research aims to examine blockchain technology with a focus on the food and agriculture studies. Therefore, a bibliometric technique was adopted to detect the prominent trends and themes in this domain through analysing the substantial articles, authors, countries, and keywords. This research attempts to expand a graphical mapping of the bibliographic information of food and agriculture research using the R package bibliometrix and Visualisation of Similarities (VOS) viewer application. Thus, the present research performed the following analyses: the co-occurrence of author keywords, multiple correspondence analysis, bibliographic coupling analysis, co-citation analysis, and network view map analysis. The findings of the network view map revealed that food and agriculture studies have been categorised into three clusters, and the terms mostly used in the title and abstract of the articles were traceability, transaction, Internet of Things (IoT), safety, and food supply chain. • Study on blockchain in FAI has emerged after 2016 and is on the early stages of research. • India tops the countries publishing articles of blockchain in FAI followed by China. • Three clusters of themes of current research studies were identified. • Institutional collaborations on blockchain research are still limited in the FAI.