Essential oils and their applications in agriculture and agricultural products: A literature analysis through VOSviewer

In agriculture, more attention has been paid to limit the amount of chemical plant protection products. A potential alternative solution has been found in essential oils (EOs), which appear as promising candidates for their properties (safe, bioactive, biodegradable products) in managing plant diseases in agriculture. Therefore, a co-occurrence analysis was carried out on the available literature on Scopus database, through network maps created by VOSviewer software in order to identify the EOs used in agriculture, agricultural products and their target application. USA and India appeared as the most productive countries in terms of documents and citations followed by Iran and Italy. The co-occurrence analysis revealed eight, more frequently used, EOs in agricul-ture, in particular, they found more applications as antibacterial and insecticidal agents. On the contrary, any specific EO for nematicidal and acaricidal activity emerged from the analysis. The EOs with the largest applicability were Thymus (mainly T. vulgaris), Citrus, Rosmarinus officinalis, Origanum, Lavandula, Mentha, Ocimum (mainly O. basilicum). Thanks to EOs main features, is possible to invest more in the research, as demonstrated by the increasing trend of documents published in the last decades and the list of high-quality journals interested in this topic. An easier interpretation of the great amount of data enables to identify what has been investigated till nowadays to shape the potential future progression and prospective in this research field.

Automated summary

In agriculture, there is a growing interest in reducing the use of chemical plant protection products. Essential oils have emerged as potential alternatives for managing plant diseases in agriculture. A co-occurrence analysis was conducted to identify the commonly used essential oils and their applications in agriculture.