*3.1. Bibliometric Analysis*

The bibliometric results are outlined in different parameters, such as chronological evolution, areas of publication, countries, institutions, and authors that have published on the subject. We found that an article from 2016 was the earliest publication in WoS, when no publication about blockchain in agribusiness was retrieved in the Scopus database. In 2017, two studies in Scopus and five in WoS were identified; in 2018, Scopus presented eight publications and WoS, 13. In 2019, there was a substantial increase to 32 documents in Scopus, and 10 in WoS, showing that the subject is a recent hot topic.

Blockchain in the agribusiness sector is just beginning to be applied since the first article was published in 2016. However, it was observed that most publications appear in 2019 and the Scopus platform stands out in terms of the number of publications. It was deduced that research on the subject has grown significantly in the last three years. This upward trend highlights the emerging nature of blockchain and increasing interest from researchers, universities, and organizations, although it was only introduced in 2009 with the Bitcoin core technology. The academic community, after some years, has identified the potential of blockchain and its possible applications.

Sometimes, blockchain is used as a synonym of Bitcoin, having previously been used only for cryptocurrency applications. In terms of the areas of knowledge publishing on blockchain, it was noted that Engineering (25%), Computer Science (24%), and Social Science (12%) were the most evident in Scopus. With WoS, it is the following: Computer Sciences, 32%; Telecommunications, 17%; Engineering and Environmental Science, 12% (Figure 3). However, knowledge areas vary greatly, enriching the subject interdisciplinarity since some studies are classified in more than one knowledge area. Interdisciplinarity is the meeting of different subjects for the construction of new knowledge, either from a pedagogical or epistemological point of view [36]. This breakdown is justified by the fact that blockchain is a technology that needs software developers to create programs and algorithms that adapt to needs. Likewise, the technology is discussed in relation to operation and development, and the application process is still very restricted. The findings sugges<sup>t</sup> that the subject is still in an exploratory phase where the technology development precedes its application.

**Figure 3.** Knowledge areas with the highest number of publications in both databases.

Ten countries stand out, China being the leader in the publishing index, with 39%, and the USA, with 25%. Together, these two countries account for almost two-thirds of publications worldwide. As for the other countries, Australia, South Africa, Finland, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany account for 5% each, and Spain and Brazil, account for 3% each. It should be observed that in these countries, there are institutions investing strongly in this technology area, besides being world leaders in technological innovation [37].

The main institutions that stand out in terms of numbers of publications on blockchain in agribusiness are Worcester Polytechnique Institute and Beijing Technology and Business University each with three articles published, and China Agricultural University, National Institute of Industrial Engineering, California State University, Bakersfield, Lancaster University, Shanghai University, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Purdue University, and Purdue University System, with two articles each. The first two universities represent the countries that excel in research, located in the USA (Massachusetts) and in China (Pequim), and are known for being prominent in research investment.

The authors that excelled in numbers of publications in Scopus were Hao, Z; Kouhizadeh, M; Mao, D; Wang, F., with three publications, and in WoS, the author Xie, C., with two documents. It should be stressed that only the author Alcarria, R. appeared in both databases, with one publication on each platform, and the others have publications in only one database. Figure 4 shows the last bibliometric indicator of this study, which aimed at generating a word cloud with the most frequent keywords mentioned in the 71 articles.

The word cloud was generated using the 692 keywords extracted from the 71 articles evaluated. It was possible to identify that the most frequent expressions are: Blockchain, Technology, Food, Energy, Smart, Supply Chain, Management, Traceability, System, and Agricultural. It is observed that these words are related to agribusiness, which corroborates the objective of this study. The following is the systematic analysis of the 71 selected studies.

**Figure 4.** Word cloud of the most frequent keywords in the 71 articles on blockchain in agribusiness.
