Summary
This scientometric analysis examines the landscape of cover crop management research through systematic mapping of 5,467 peer-reviewed articles in the Scopus database from 1956 to 2024. The research demonstrates exponential growth in publications since 1991, with Agricultural and Biological Sciences as the predominant subject area, and identifies soil quality improvement, nutrient efficiency, and climate change adaptation as central research themes. The analysis reveals the United States as the most productive country overall, though Switzerland and the Netherlands show notably high research intensity relative to land area, and suggests future research directions toward climate-adaptive cover crop species, technological innovations for monitoring, and economic-social impact assessment.
UK applicability
The findings are broadly applicable to UK farming systems, as cover crop management research priorities identified—soil quality, nutrient efficiency, and climate adaptation—align with UK agricultural policy goals. However, the dominance of United States research may mean less region-specific evidence on cover crop performance under UK climatic and soil conditions; UK practitioners may benefit from greater investment in locally-focused trials and economic viability assessments.
Key measures
Annual publication production trends, total publication counts, co-occurrence networks of keywords, co-authorship networks, co-citation networks, geographic distribution of research productivity (by country and per unit surface area), subject classification
Outcomes reported
The study analysed 5,467 English-language peer-reviewed articles on cover crop management from 1956 to March 2024, mapping publication trends, research networks, and identified research topics through scientometric methods. Key findings included exponential growth in publications from 1991 onwards, identification of soil quality improvement and nutrient efficiency as primary research foci, and emergence of climate change adaptation as a future research direction.
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