Moringa oleifera through the years: a bibliometric analysis of scientific research (2000-2020)

• Published in: South African journal of botany 2021-09, Vol.141, p.12-24
• Main Authors: George, Toyosi T., Obilana, Anthony O., Oyenihi, Ayodeji B., Rautenbach, Fannie G.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bibliometric analysis; Moringa oleifera; Scopus; Vosviewer
• ISSN: 0254-6299; 1727-9321
• DOI: 10.1016/j.sajb.2021.04.025

•There has been a continuous growth and surge in research on Moringa oleifera in diverse fields in the last 20 years.•Between the year 2011 and 2020, research output on the plant grew by more than 200% compared to the previous decade (2000-2010).•India continues to lead in terms of worldwide research output and citations.•South African Journal of Botany remains the leading publishing journal on the plant while Journal of Ethnopharmacology has the highest citation.•Egypt, Nigeria and India have the best international link strength.•New research trends on Moringa oleifera continues to focus on pharmacological importance of the plant. Moringa oleifera Lam. is an important plant with multiple benefits for humans, and has been termed “the miracle plant” by many. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of M. oleifera (MO) in the last two decades with data indexed on the Scopus database. The objective is to evaluate how research outputs on the plant have evolved within the period with a focus on country, institution, journal and author participation. The analysis was limited to the search command - article title “Moringa oleifera”, for original research articles and conference presentations. The search output was 2,345 documents, representing 97% of all time published reports on the subject. A data analysis software – VOSviewer 1.6.15 (Leiden, Netherlands) was used to analyze the data generated from Scopus. So far, 98 countries have contributed to research publications on MO, with India leading the pack. The most productive author is Rosângela Bergamasco of the Universidade Estadual de Maringá in Brazil with 60 published articles on MO. This institution is also the leading contributor to research outputs on the plant. The most cited author – Farooq Anwar is affiliated with the University of Sargodha, Pakistan with 1091 citations distributed over 11 publications on the plant. The South African Journal of Botany continues to lead in terms of the publication number with 64 original articles on MO while the Journal of Ethnopharmacology's published articles had the most citations (1166). VOSviewer analysis established Egypt, Nigeria and India as the countries with the best international link strength. The research areas on the plant are mainly on the pharmacological, food and nutritional uses as well as its applications in water treatment, environmental management and biofuel production.