A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF CLITORIA TERNATEA

Abstract

Clitoria ternatea L. has gained more attention from the scientific community in the recent years due to its potential biological properties including antidiabetic, anticancer, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial activities. This explains the increment in the number of scientific studies done on the plant. However, there is no available paper found on the bibliometric analysis of C. ternatea specifying the important relationship between the content of the bioactive compounds, the types of research and the geographical diversity. Thus, this study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis on the research trends, spatial distribution and related bioactive compounds of the C. ternatea. Search term (“Clitoria ternatea”) OR (“Blue Butterfly Pea flower”) is used as the keyword in SCOPUS database and 598 publications were found within the period of 1954 until 2020. The growth of publications showed a sharp increase in 2011 and 2018 and keep growing throughout the years since then. The VOSviewer programme was used to analyze keywords, countries, bioactive compounds, medicinal benefits and authors through visual knowledge mapping to assess the research trends. However, only 43% of the publications were selected for further analysis subsequent to screening stage. Results on the relationship between C. ternatea and bioactive compounds showed that antioxidant was the most frequently encountered pharmaceutical potential and anthocyanin was the most frequently encountered biological properties. The geographical distribution analyses showed that most researches were originated from Southeast Asian countries. The bibliometric analysis performed in this study has identified trends in C. ternatea plant from 1954 to 2020, which will guide the future directions in this research field.