Development and trend in Chinese agricultural green technology: Knowledge map analysis based on CiteSpace

Green technology is an important driving force that underlies the high-quality development of agriculture in China. However, there is little in-depth research on the scale and type structure of the technology. Clarifying the agricultural green technology development status and trends in China will significantly promote agricultural innovation and drive agricultural sustainability. In this study, the CiteSpace software was used to systematically sort and analyze the knowledge map based on the agricultural green technology achievement data for the national and provincial science and technology awards from 2004 to 2019. The results showed the following: 1) The number of agricultural green technology achievements was generally increasing, with an average annual growth rate of 5.15%. The number of achievements associated with planting was significantly higher than that with breeding, accounting for about 80.19% of the total achievements, but the average annual growth rate for agricultural green technology achievements for planting was relatively low. 2) Agricultural green technology keywords formed 17 clusters, including wide adaptability breeding, virus detection, deep processing, efficient cultivation, and so on. They mainly focused on four aspects of agricultural green technology: safe and harmless inputs, environmentally friendly production processes, economical and efficient resource use, and environmental monitoring and early warning. China had established an agricultural green technology system, but there were only a few technologies related to quality standards. 3) There were seven emergent words for green technology achievements in Chinese agriculture from 2004 to 2019, and green technology associated with comprehensive prevention and control, quality and efficiency improvement of agricultural production, and green prevention and control had become new research hotspots in recent years. Agricultural green technology R&D and innovation are closely related to agricultural policies, and results had shown that policy guidance effectively promoted the technology. 4) The number and clusters of regional agricultural green technology achievements differed and decreased from east to central to west. The influence of regional characteristics means that research hotspots in different regions have unique characteristics. Based on these results, we proposed the following policy recommendations: promoting the integrated development of agricultural green industrial technology and green rural comprehensive development technology, improving the coordination of agricultural green technology by combining policy guidance and market pull, strengthening regional green agricultural technology characteristics, and promoting the structural optimization and upgrading of agricultural green technology. This study provides a visual analysis of agricultural green technology development in China. The study also improves the current understanding of the research progress in this field and promotes the exploration of new developments and trends.