SUGANDHA* AND DINESH KUMAR
Silviculture & Forest Management Division,
Forest Research Institute, Dehradun (Uttarakhand), India
*(e-mail : sugandha.grains@gmail.com)
(Received : 5 July 2022; Accepted : 4 August 2022)
SUMMARY
Livestock is the sub-sector of the agriculture sector that contributes directly to the livelihoods and food security of almost a billion people in India. It is estimated that by 2025,there will
be a 65% deficit in green fodder and a 25% deficit in dry fodder. Forests and village common lands, that have traditionally been the mainstay of sustaining this occupation, have already become degraded due to increasing biotic pressure and lack of adequate focus on their rehabilitation and management. Ensiling is one of a fodder preservation method to produce silage. Silage research is constantly increasing to meet the needs of agricultural systems and reduce the uncontrolled grazing pressure on forests. However, the adoption of this fodder preservation technique has not been widely approached in the country. A bibliometric method was applied to investigate the general situation of the research on silage in India with respect to other countries. The upward trend in the number of papers published confirms the rising need for silage as fodder alternatives in the world. India with 41 papers in comparison to the United States of America with 1371 papers, contributes very little in the area of research on ensiling. This paper explores the international advances in silage studies by analyzing articles published between 2011 and 2021 using VOSsviewer – a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks.
Key words: Bibliometric analysis, fodder, silage, unsustainable grazing, VOSviewer