Is soil quality a concern in sugarcane cultivation? A bibliometric review

Environmental sustainability is attracting attention due to global environmental concerns and one of the main focuses is agricultural production. Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum) is a crop of global significance and one of the important issues to be addressed towards its sustainable production is how soil quality has been considered in sugarcane cultivation. This bibliometric study aimed to investigate how soil quality has been addressed in sugarcane management research, as well as to identify possible knowledge gaps to be considered in future studies. The bibliographic search was performed by using a combination of terms considering all databases from the Web of Science (R) (WOS). A total of 160 scientific publications were found and the following information was analyzed: i) publication years, ii) countries, iii) institutions, iv) authors, and v) research areas. Furthermore, to identify possible gaps in the literature, we classified soil-related papers in the following categories: soil physics, soil chemistry, soil use and management, soil conservation, soil survey and classification, soil micromorphology, soil biology, soil geochemistry, and soil fertility and plant nutrition. We also presented the most cited papers and contribution maps for countries considering a subset of 119 articles from the WOS Core Collection database. Concerns about soil quality in the cultivation of sugarcane have increased in recent years, especially in the last 9 years, when 74 % of the total papers were published. Brazil is the country responsible for 99 out of 160 publications with 12 institutions and 13 authors responsible for the largest number of publications. From a total of 160 published articles, 97 % were related to agriculture research and 71 % to soil science, whereas soil use and management was the most reported category. We found a lack of studies of no-tillage systems in sugarcane cultivation that assess soil quality, and that integrate physical, chemical and biological indicators, including hydrophysical, micromorphological and macrofauna analyses as indicators of soil quality. Therefore, we suggest that these issues should be considered in future studies.