Carotenoids of durum wheat: Bibliometric analysis of literature from Lens.org
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30835/2413-7510.2025.347604Keywords:
Triticum durum, carotenoid pigments, bibliometricsAbstract
Durum wheat (Triticum durum) is the second most cultivated wheat species. The yellowness index (YI) is one of the main indicators of durum wheat grain quality. It is determined by carotenoid content. Wheat varieties with high carotenoid content are highly valued in the pasta industry. This accounts for the large number of documents dedicated to the topic of carotenoids in durum wheat. Bibliometric parameters are used to analyze large corpuses of diverse scientific literature. Our purpose was to evaluate publishing activity on the "carotenoids of durum wheat" topic based on key bibliometric parameters. The scientometric database Lens.org was used for literature search and analysis. A total of 2,364 scientific papers published between 1955 and 2025 were found. After 1990, the number of publications per year began to increase gradually, and from 2007, publishing activity on the "carotenoids of durum wheat" topic started to grow rapidly, reaching its peak in 2021-2022, after which a sharp decline was noted. The citation time profile differs from that of the number of publications. This parameter also began to grow rapidly after 1997 but is characterized by very significant fluctuations, although the year of the maximum total number of citations (2020) almost coincides with the years of the maximum number of publications. Foods (Basel, Switzerland), Frontiers in Plant Science, and Plants (Basel, Switzerland) published the most of the articles on this topic. Frontiers in Plant Science, Photosynthetica, and Agronomy are the leaders in terms of citations. The most productive authors are Agata Gadaleta, Sergio R. Atienza, and Andrea Brandolini, while the most cited ones are Agata Gadaleta, Pasquale De Vita, Antonio Blanco, and Anntonella Pasqualone. Among organizations, the Spanish National Research Council holds the first place in both the number of publications and citation count. Italy is the leading country in terms of the number of publications, and the USA is the leader in the total number of citations. The themes of the most cited publications were also analyzed, and it was found that reviews dedicated to broad issues of plant resilience, biochemistry, physiology, and breeding received the highest counts of citations. The bibliometric evaluation allowed for characterization of the temporal evolution and regional peculiarities of the publishing activity in durum wheat carotenoid research, identification of the most influential journals, leading institutions, and authors; the most cited publications were also reviewed. The discrepancies in the analyses of different bibliometric parameters are highlighted, specifically the number of publications versus the citation count and the most cited authors versus the most cited documents.
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