Climate-smart agriculture research: hotspots, trends, and prospects

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA), a high-potential agricultural system solution to the dual challenges of climate change and food security, received great attention from researchers worldwide as soon as it was proposed. However, the progress of CSA research projects in China is slow and has not attracted widespread attention from the academic community. Using the CiteSpace (5.8. R3) software, this study selected the core data set of the Web of Science to analyze the international CSA research literatures from 2010 to 2021, sorted out foreign research hotspots and trends, and put forward new outlooks to provide theoretical and practical support for the development of CSA in China. The research results were as follows: 1) CSA had formed a complete conceptual framework for balancing agriculture and climate change in multiple dimensions. 2) CSA and sustainable intensification, smart agriculture (smart farming), conservation agriculture, and other researches were intertwined and developed, and research hotspots revolved around “three pillars”: productivity, adaptation, and mitigation. 3) The trend of CSA research tended to be generalized, and the research areas covered developing countries, research objects focused on multiple goals, and research content covered multiple fields. Finally, according to future research trends, CSA was predicted to pay more attention to its connotation exploration, implementation framework formulation, vulnerable group needs, interdisciplinary cooperation, and agricultural transformation. In addition, this study emphasizes that as a new model of agricultural development in response to climate change, the theoretical framework and practical technologies of CSA have both theoretical and practical significance for agricultural transformation in China, and its application and adaptive development in China is an area that needs to be urgently investigated.