Food security and paddy farming: Science mapping of present and future trends

Abstract

As global population growth and climate variability intensify, ensuring sustainable paddy production is central to global food security. However, research across agronomy, water governance, environmental science, and plant genetics remains fragmented, lacking an integrated synthesis of its intellectual structure. This study systematically maps the thematic architecture and conceptual evolution of food security research in paddy farming to uncover core intellectual lineages, structural knowledge gaps, and strategic trajectories for future interdisciplinary integration. A dual science-mapping design combining bibliographic coupling and co-word analysis was conducted using VOSviewer. The dataset comprises 751 publications spanning 1993 to 2026 retrieved from the Scopus database. Bibliographic coupling identified five distinct intellectual clusters: global food security and climate risk assessment, climate-smart agriculture and conservation tillage, water-saving irrigation efficiency, crop physiology and genetic resilience, and site-specific nutrient management. Complementarily, keyword co-word analysis yielded three major conceptual domains: water-resource management, greenhouse gas emissions and soil nutrient trade-offs, and crop physiology/genetics under abiotic stress. Triangulating both techniques validates that water governance, biogeochemical trade-offs, and plant stress resilience form the stable conceptual foundation of the literature. However, both approaches reveal persistent structural siloing between water-management research and crop-genetics/physiology streams. To overcome existing research silos, future scholarly efforts must transition toward an integrated socio-ecological systems model connecting water governance, nutrient management, and genetic resilience. Policymakers and R&D funding bodies should explicitly foster cross-disciplinary programs uniting irrigation specialists and plant breeders, prioritizing scalable water-saving protocols and precision nutrient management in key granaries across South and East Asia.