A Scientometric Assessment of Agri-Food Technology for Research Activity and Productivity

In accordance with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), several SDGs target global food issues, including zero hunger (food security and sustainable agriculture), responsible consumption and production (food losses), climate action (greenhouse gas emissions from food waste), and partnerships for the goals (research collaboration). As such, it is vital to identify technology and market opportunities to support advanced development by exploring scientific and technological research on such SDGs. The significance of technological innovation and evaluations of activity, productivity, and collaboration aids and guides future research streams. Motivated by the growing severity of the global food waste crisis, this paper focuses on the case study of shelf-life extension technology for food and applies a scientometric analysis of patents based on text mining. VantagePoint was used to analyze 2516 patents issued between 2000 and 2020, with the aim of understanding the conceptual structure of knowledge and the social relationships among key players. The results indicate that the technology is experiencing a period of growth, and it can be clustered into five technology sectors. Across all technology clusters, China outperformed other countries in terms of the number of patents. Almost all of China’s patents applied for technology commercialization domestically, whereas other countries tended to apply for patents overseas to exploit opportunities. The findings have implications for both policymaking and strategic decision-making using a multi-layered network innovation system.