A systematic literature review on adoption and impact of micro-irrigation

Water stands as a vital natural resource essential for supporting human life on earth. However, its availability is dwindling globally. Khalid et al. (2018) suggested that by 2025, 60% of the world's population will confront severe water scarcity. The agricultural sector faces severe jeopardy from climate change, posing substantial risks to both developed and developing countries (Field & Barros 2014). Climate change worsens the situation by intensifying floods and droughts, altering precipitation patterns, adjusting water resources, and accelerating glacier melt, thereby contributing to the elevation of sea level (Aqueduct 2024). More than 85% of the original natural wetland area was depleted, of which 75% of the land surface underwent substantial modifications, thereby diminishing the capacity of Earth's ecosystems to manage water resources sustainably (Díaz et al. 2019). In the sphere of water consumption, agriculture currently utilizes 87% of the world's consumptive water resources (Villalobos & Fereres 2016), with approximately 30% sourced from unsustainable outlets (Liu et al. 2017). Agricultural water consumption stands as the primary global user of water, profoundly influenced by climate change, socio-economic progress, and population expansion (Ward & Pulido-Velazquez 2008; Gerten et al. 2020). Roughly 40% of croplands worldwide encountered water scarcity previously, with projections indicating a worsening scenario in the future (Liu et al. 2022). The exacerbation of agricultural water scarcity has the potential to impact food production, posing a threat to food security, especially for impoverished populations (Tong & Elimelech 2016; Pastor et al. 2019).

Enhancing water efficiency within the agricultural sector emerged as a pivotal objective for preserving water resources and mitigating water scarcity (Yazdanpanah et al. 2014; Yazdanpanah et al. 2015; Azadi et al. 2019; Rahimi-Feyzabad et al. 2020). The imminent global challenge of water hazards demands immediate attention. To confront these challenges, farmers can adopt water saving technologies, specifically micro-irrigation (MI) methods such as drip irrigation, sprinkler irrigation, and subsurface drip irrigation (SDI). Srivastava et al. (2010) noted that irrigation efficiency could be enhanced to 95% through the transition from conventional irrigation methods like border or furrow irrigation (FI) to pressurized irrigation systems. Furthermore, the availability of water for irrigation was diminishing steadily, while the expenses associated with creating water sources continued to rise. Bhaskar et al. (2005) emphasized the necessity for advanced irrigation technologies because the productivity of irrigated land and the efficiency per unit of water remained suboptimal compared to their potential.

The MI system plays a significant role not only in conserving water but also in effectively managing energy, labour, and fertilizer resources to enhance crop production. It contributed to uniform water application and water use efficiency, eliminated the need for land levelling, ensured consistent irrigation for agricultural fields, enhanced cropping intensity, optimized irrigation water usage, and uplifted the socio-economic status of farmers. Apart from improving water use efficiency, MI offered additional economic and social advantages. Empirical evidence demonstrated that MI boosted productivity across various crops, reduced weed growth, mitigated soil erosion, and reduced cultivation expenses, particularly labour-intensive weeding, as well as reduced electricity consumption (Grewal et al. 2021). Results from a field experiment suggested that drip irrigation is predominantly used as a water-saving technique in the cultivation of both field and greenhouse crops (LÜ et al. 2015). Micro-sprinkler irrigation is a modern irrigation technology designed for water conservation and was developed relatively recently. In contrast to drip irrigation, its manufacturing costs were lower because it did not require labyrinth channel emitters (Zhang et al. 2020).

Despite the availability of various water-saving technologies, the adoption of these technologies ultimately relies on individual farmers. Embracing water-saving technologies such as MI methods like drip, sprinkler, subsurface drip, and micro-sprinkler irrigation systems has the potential to alleviate the global water crisis in agriculture. Certain non-OECD countries exhibited higher rates of drip irrigation adoption. For instance, in Israel, more than 50% of the irrigated land was under the use of drip irrigation (OECD 2011). Similarly, in Jordan and Cyprus, adoption rates were approximately 60 and 95%, respectively (Alcon et al. 2011). In literature, the discussions surrounding the effects of MI technologies typically emphasized their advocacy for three primary objectives: conserving water in irrigated agriculture to mitigate water scarcity, using them as a strategy to increase income and reduce poverty in rural areas, and enhancing food and nutritional security for rural households (Bilgi 1999; Shah & Keller 2002; Narayanamoorthy 2003; Upadhyay 2003).

Therefore, examining the adoption and impact of MI technologies in agriculture was crucial. Given the gap in existing research, the study aimed to examine the specific trends in the adoption and impact of MI research. Additionally, there was a lack of research in this domain that incorporated trend analysis and identified the most prolific and influential authors, as well as the countries involved in the research. Furthermore, there were no studies examining citation analysis, co-occurrence analysis, co-authorship analysis, and bibliometric analysis concerned with the adoption and impact of MI. To fill these gaps, a systematic literature review approach was employed to assess the existing literature on the adoption and impact of MI.

The current study also provided a literature assessment through bibliometric analysis to address various research inquiries. The following are the prominent research questions:

• 1. What was the research trend in the adoption and impact of MI research?

• 2. Which authors and countries were the most productive and influential in the adoption and impact of MI research?

• 3. Who were the most collaborative authors and institutions in the adoption and impact of MI research?

• 4. What were the most recurrent keywords and thematic clusters found in the selected literature concerning adoption and impact research in MI?

• 5. Who were the authors with the highest citation counts, and which journals were the most frequently cited in the references among the selected literature on the adoption and impact of MI research?

Following the responses to these inquiries, this study provided a discussion on the adoption and impact of MI.

The study employed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) technique (Figure 1) to conduct a systematic literature review, focusing on MI. The literature search was conducted using the Scopus database, employing various combinations of keywords such as knowledge, awareness, adoption, and impact related to MI domains. The search string incorporated diverse variations of keywords, Boolean operators, and truncation symbols to ensure the retrieval of relevant and robust results for subsequent analysis. Initially, all the selected articles were subjected to automatic analysis using VOSviewer, a software tool employed for constructing and visualizing bibliometric network diagrams used for this study.

After using the search equations, the following criteria (Table 4) were used for the inclusion and exclusion process:

Table 5 presents the primary contributors in the domain of MI, encompassing influential authors and nations. According to citation counts, Zaccaria D. from the University of California, USA, emerged as the most influential author in the domain of MI research, with 37 citations in his two publications, followed closely by Bloomberg M., Jia L., Li G., and Xi B., each with 32 citations and 1 publication. The United States leads influential countries with 106 citations from six publications, followed by China with 61 citations from 7 publications. New Zealand ranked third with 32 citations from 1 publication and demonstrated a high citations-per-publication (CPP) rate of 32 CPP, followed by the United States with 17.6 CPP, while Ethiopia and South Africa had 14 CPP each. Zaccaria D. stands out as the most productive author with two publications, while China emerged as the most productive country with seven publications centred on the adoption, knowledge, awareness, and impact assessment of MI techniques.

The blue nodes represented authors whose works were primarily published between 2013 and 2016, indicating the era of collaboration. In contrast, the green nodes signify a unique cluster with Li Y. as the central figure, whose collaborative efforts peaked around 2019, distinguished from others. Finally, the yellow nodes, which denoted authors whose works were predominantly published between 2022 and 2023, showed a more recent collaborative trend in the network.

The co-authorship with author analysis unveiled nuanced collaborative dynamics among authors, delineated by time period and intensity of collaboration, with Li Y. playing a significant role across different clusters.

In co-occurrence analysis, terms were commonly sourced from ‘author keywords’ but can also be gleaned from ‘article titles,’ ‘abstracts’, and ‘full texts’. This analytical approach posits that frequently appearing keywords signify thematic connections. It served as a predictive tool for future research directions by incorporating relevant terms found within the paper's context and anticipated analysis objectives. Through the examination of word associations, co-word analysis offers insights into emerging trends and potential areas of investigation within the field.

Notably, ‘Drip irrigation’ emerged as the most prominent term with 12 occurrences, closely followed by ‘Irrigation’ itself, which appeared 11 times. This prevalence suggests that a significant portion of past studies, particularly those revolving around drip irrigation, soil moisture dynamics, water management, and soil conditions, were conducted within the MI domain.

This analysis led to the classification of these keywords into five distinct clusters, each distinguished by a specific colour. Cluster 1, depicted in red frames, encompassed topics such as cost–benefit analysis, crop yield, and economic analysis, comprised of 13 terms.

Cluster 2, represented by green frames, explored the themes related to soil moisture, SDI, and irrigation management with 13 unique terms.

The serene blue frames of Cluster 3 highlighted the discussions surrounding irrigation, water management, and irrigation systems, encapsulating a total of 11 terms.

Cluster 4, characterized by yellow frames, delves into aspects such as water use efficiency, MI, adoption, and the United States with eight terms in total.

Lastly, Cluster 5, distinguished by violet frames, touched upon drip irrigation, weed control, herbicides, and soil featuring a concise compilation of four distinct terms.

Through this examination, the complex thematic links presented in discussions related to MI were identified and provided insights into potential paths for further scholarly investigation and research directions.

Through these collaborations, institutions can share their innovative ideas and resources, contributing to the global effort to address various challenges. Such partnerships facilitated the exchange of knowledge and expertise, ultimately benefiting all participating organizations. By leveraging collective efforts, institutions could tackle the issues on a broader scale and derive mutual advantages from their collaborative endeavours.

Expanding upon the groundwork laid in the preceding section with the sourced materials and the gathered literature using bibliographic coupling techniques, bibliographic coupling was used to explore the connections among citing publications, grasp the evolving themes within a research field over time, and analyse the relationships among the cited works (Donthu et al. 2021). In contrast to co-citation analysis, which examined cited publications and emphasized influential works with high citation rates within the domain, bibliographic coupling relies on citing publications to elucidate existing knowledge within the field (Goodell et al. 2021). Consequently, this analysis would offer a depiction of the current state of the research field (Donthu et al. 2021). The bibliographic coupling analysis (Figure 8) revealed three thematic clusters, namely, the impact of irrigation water, weed control and crop production, and irrigation and organic cultivation. Table 6 also presents key influential articles from each cluster.

Cluster 1 focused on the effects on irrigation water. Xi et al. (2014) explored the impact of subsurface irrigation on the growth and transpiration of Populus tomentosa in the North China Plain and observed that SDI influenced soil water content (SWC) within 0–80 cm soil depth but increased below 80 cm depth during heavy rain. SDI enhanced the above-ground dry mass (ADB) increment in P. tomentosa plantations. Lü et al. (2015) investigated the effects of various irrigation methods on microenvironments and root distribution in winter wheat fields and found that SDI maintained the highest soil matric potential during the irrigation period, affecting root distribution patterns. In the SDI treatment, the soil's elevated moisture content at a depth of 40–100 cm resulted in thicker roots compared to those observed in the sprinkler irrigation and border irrigation treatments. Dos Santos et al. (2020) studied the yield and water use efficiency of ‘Tommy Atkins’ and ‘Palmer’ mango trees under localized irrigation with a water deficit. Their findings suggested that ‘Tommy Atkins’ mango yield was higher with micro-sprinkler irrigation, while ‘Palmer’ mango trees showed better yield and water use efficiency with drip irrigation compared to micro-sprinkler irrigation.

Cluster 2 focused on weed control and crop yield. Zaccaria et al. (2017) conducted research on SDI for resource-efficient alfalfa production and observed slight yield increases (∼5%) and moderate reductions in water usage (approximately 6–8%) based on experimental trials. Hakoomat et al. (2017) explored the application of pre- and post-emergence herbicides under improved field irrigation as a sustainable weed management strategy in cotton crops. Their findings indicated a significant reduction (19–24%) in the total weed density across all treatments utilizing drip irrigation practices compared to those relying on FI methods, particularly evident 60 days after sowing.

Cluster 3 encompasses studies focused on irrigation and organic cultivation. Schmidt et al. (2018) explored the transition to SDI within organic cultivation. Their study revealed notable enhancements in irrigation water productivity (IWP) with SDI compared to FI across both years, despite applying 17% less irrigation water in 2015 and 36% less in 2016 with SDI. Additionally, SDI treatments effectively suppressed weeds, with fewer than 0.15 weeds per square metre in both years. Weed density was significantly higher in FI compared to drip irrigation treatments, with a 30-fold difference in 2015 and a 100-fold difference in 2016. However, there was no discernible difference in weed density between single-drip irrigation and double-drip irrigation treatments. In a separate study, Bhatti et al. (2022) revealed that the micro-investment by Tanzanian smallholders in drip irrigation kits for vegetable production enhanced their livelihoods. Their findings indicated that partial budgeting analysis demonstrated increased revenue generation for most vegetable varieties with MI adoption.

The success of the technologies depends upon the adoption of the technologies by the farmers. Some studies showed that the awareness rate of drip/sprinkler irrigation was high (Sanjeevi 2019). However, there was a lack of awareness regarding the economic advantages associated with high-efficiency irrigation systems (Razzaq et al. 2018). Spreading awareness among the farmers regarding the economic advantages provided by high-efficiency irrigation systems could be accomplished to increase the adoption rate of MI technology among farmers. Few researchers revealed that the adoption of MI leads to a reduction in groundwater extraction only when the power connection is metered (Bahinipati & Viswanathan 2019; Fan et al. 2022).

The primary factors driving farmers' intention to adopt MI were subjective norms (SN), and it was noted that attitude was more important than perceived behavioural control (PBC) for drip irrigation adoption, and it was revealed that attitude was pivotal in driving technological change (Wang et al. 2023). Furthermore, the studies revealed three models focusing on socio-economic factors, social capital, and technology characteristics. Age, farmers' education regarding operation and upkeep, water resources and proximity to agricultural offices, level of education, diversity of products, and distance to urban centres come under socio-economic factors. Family, community, workplace, and availability of water storage facilities fell under social capital. Innovation, effective integration with fertilizer application, and drip design tailored to soil characteristics fell under the technology characteristics model. From these factors, access to credit, labour availability, education level, and costs associated with water extraction emerged as significant and positive factors influencing farmers' decisions on the adoption of MI. However, investment and farmers' age, information sources, membership in organizations, and subsidies exert a significant and negative impact on the adoption of MI (Belaidi et al. 2022; Sajid et al. 2022; Yazdanpanah et al. 2022).

Despite the numerous advantages of MI, the acceptance of MI (drip/sprinkler) was low among farmers (Sanjeevi 2019) due to the high installation cost, maintenance cost, and salt deposition. A few studies revealed that training enhanced the adoption of drip irrigation by farmers through active learning, social interaction, and the absorptive capacity of the drip fertigation system. Farmers who had received adequate training in the installation of drip irrigation had a tendency to adopt MI (Yang et al. 2021; Hussain et al. 2022). As mentioned earlier, the adoption of water-saving practices like drip irrigation has various challenges, such as infrastructure, installation cost, maintenance cost, system maintenance, water quality, drip blockage issues, lack of knowledge, organizational mode, rationale, social interaction, time, and space (Greenland et al. 2019; Wainaina 2021). Some studies showed that the government provided subsidies for the installation of MI systems, which improved the adoption rate. However, interestingly, one study stated that subsidies might not sufficiently incentivize small-scale farmers to embrace high-efficiency irrigation systems (Razzaq et al. 2018). The implementation of drip irrigation promoted the transition towards horticultural crops and also improved farmers' income (Fishman et al. 2023).

As indicated earlier, the adoption of MI not only led to a reduction in the usage of water in agricultural fields but also had an impact on economic benefits, yield, energy, labour, productivity, weed control, and the environment. The study further discussed the economic benefits, water use efficiency, environment, energy, weed control, and yield in the subsequent paragraphs.

Various studies showed considerable economic benefits to farmers' investment in MI technologies (Fan et al. 2022; Singh et al. 2023), and these returns on investment led to an increase in the adoption of MI. Several authors measured the economic benefits through the benefit–cost ratio (BCR) and net present value (NPV) as assessment tools and also to determine the viability of the technology (Kiruthika & Kumar 2020; Narayanamoorthy et al. 2020; Hussain et al. 2022).

Some studies revealed that profit could increase by 2.1% due to the adoption of drip irrigation with mulching (Nouri et al. 2020). However, a few studies mentioned that groundnut, apple and soyabean intercropping systems yielded economically superior benefits under different forms of MI, such as drip irrigation, drip irrigation with mulching, SDI, and bubbler irrigation. The farmers could recover the entire capital cost incurred for implementing drip systems in groundnut cultivation within the first year itself (Narayanamoorthy et al. 2020; Dai et al. 2023). Furthermore, in cotton planting, the biochar application rate under drip irrigation with mulching had higher economic benefits and an increase in quality and yield (Li et al. 2023b), whereas gross margins were increased for wheat and mango farms under high-efficiency irrigation systems (Razzaq et al. 2018).

A study economically compared low-head drip irrigation with high-head drip systems for different crops like dates, lemon, grapes, squash gourd, bitter gourd, and okra in different conditions. The study concluded that dates, lemon, grapes, and mixed fruit orchards had a high BCR in low-head drip irrigation systems, whereas crops like grapes, bitter gourd, and okra in rainfed conditions and squash gourd in irrigated conditions exhibited a high BCR in high head drip irrigation systems (Hussain et al. 2022). The evolution of the MI system also increased the economic condition of farmers growing different crops, as evident from the above-mentioned authors.

The adoption of MI had a great impact on water use efficiency. However, different types of MI on different crops had different levels of impact on water conservation. Some of the studies stated that the adoption of MI had high water use efficiency when compared with FI, surface irrigation, or flood irrigation (Table 7) (Narayanamoorthy et al. 2020; Singh et al. 2022; Li et al. 2023a).

However, in crops like wheat and maize, water use efficiency increased by up to 3 and 25.3% when compared with surface irrigation (Li et al. 2023a), whereas, in date palm, the increase in water use efficiency might be due to the direct application of water near the root zone of the crops.

Furthermore, Aziz et al. (2021) pointed out that conventional irrigation leads to roughly 50% of water loss through leaching into groundwater, and hence additional water requirements were created to meet the water loss. Several studies compared the water use efficiency between surface drip irrigation and SDI. From these studies, it was revealed that SDI had a greater impact on water use efficiency than surface drip irrigation (Ayars et al. 2017; Dehghanisanij et al. 2020; Palacios-Diaz et al. 2023). Further, in date palm the water use efficiency was significantly higher than in drip irrigation (Mohammed et al. 2021).

Interestingly, a few studies compared root zone MI with surface drip irrigation. In grapes, direct root zone irrigation effectively enhanced water use efficiency by 9–11% (Ma et al. 2020). However, in pepper, average water use efficiency was approximately 20.2% higher with root zone MI than with surface drip irrigation in red loam soil areas only, whereas in yellow sand soil, surface drip irrigation performed better than root zone MI by 16.6% (Zhang et al. 2020). It was clear that soil types also affect water use efficiency. A few studies revealed that the moisture level in the micro-sprinkler plastic film, drip irrigation plastic film, and mulching system remained consistently 25–30% higher compared to conventional drip irrigation methods (Kadbhane & Manekar 2016; Li et al. 2022). However, a study revealed that drip irrigation in conjunction with mulching outperformed conventional surface irrigation, surface irrigation with mulching, and sole drip irrigation (Samui et al. 2020).

Most of the studies revealed that the implementation of drip irrigation leads to a reduction in weed growth compared to conventional irrigation methods like FI and surface irrigation. However, a few studies revealed that under sugar beet cultivation, the infestation of weed growth was reduced by 8–10 times when compared to surface irrigation (Kenenbayev et al. 2016), whereas in cotton crops, the reduction in weed growth was noticed in drip-irrigated fields compared to the furrow method of irrigation (Hakoomat et al. 2017). Further, drip irrigation reduced the costs associated with weeding in groundnut crops (Narayanamoorthy et al. 2020). The reduction in costs for weeding might be due to the lower growth of weeds under drip irrigation.

Some studies revealed that weed biomass was notably reduced under SDI compared with drip irrigation (Ayars et al. 2017). Further, weed occurrence was reduced under SDI compared to drip irrigation in maize (Dehghanisanij et al. 2020). The reduction in weed growth in the case of drip irrigation might be due to the targeted application of water to the root zone of plants, whereas in the case of SDI, water and nutrients were supplied directly to the crop root area, leading to less availability of water for weed growth.

As mentioned earlier, MI played a crucial role in water use efficiency, weed growth, yield, and economic benefits, and it also had an impact on the environment and energy. Some research studies revealed that when untreated wastewater was used for irrigation through drip and flood irrigation, the heavy metal deposition was comparatively low in drip irrigation (1.25–20%), whereas in flood irrigation, it exceeded 25% (Pal et al. 2023). However, when treated wastewater was used through flood and drip irrigation, water usage and grain yields were enhanced under drip irrigation with treated wastewater (Ouoba et al. 2022), whereas drip irrigation, when integrated with fertilizer, and air, resulted in notable enhancements in various soil parameters like microbial biomass, enzyme activities, and soil aeration (Lei et al. 2022). A few studies mentioned that drip and sprinkler irrigation proved to be efficient approaches for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and reducing global warming potential (Mehmood et al. 2023). However, drip irrigation leads to an increase in methane uptake and a decrease in accumulated CO₂ emissions compared with sprinkler and border irrigation (Mehmood et al. 2021). In the concept of energy conservation, Narayanamoorthy et al. (2020) pointed out that drip irrigation leads to a reduction in electricity consumption by about 121 kWh per acre compared to conventional irrigation.

Most of the studies on MI indicated that it improved the production and productivity of crops. About half of the studies stated that the yield was increased in drip irrigation when compared to conventional irrigation methods and other water management technologies like precision land levelling and bed planting (Rizwan et al. 2018; Aziz et al. 2021; Ouoba et al. 2022), whereas maize grain yield was higher under drip fertigation compared to flood fertigation (Guo et al. 2022). Crops like carrot, tomato, and potato yield increased by 56–120% under drip irrigation systems compared to conventional irrigation methods (Dawit et al. 2020). High-efficiency irrigation systems like sprinklers and drip irrigation enhanced the yield of wheat and mango (Razzaq et al. 2018).

Some studies found that SDI treatments resulted in higher average yield and productivity than drip irrigation treatments (Carvalho et al. 2014; Ayars et al. 2017). In terms of biomass yield, SDI outperformed drip irrigation (Dehghanisanij et al. 2020), whereas subsurface drip fertigation enhanced seed cotton yield by 26.6% compared to surface flood irrigation (Singh et al. 2022). A study by Ma et al. (2020) revealed that direct root zone irrigation enhanced grape yield by 9–12%. The yield enhancement might be due to the direct application of water in the root zone, which facilitates deeper root penetration and nutrient uptake.

Some studies stated that drip irrigation under mulch increased the yield up to 71.1% in intercropping of apple-soyabean (Dai et al. 2023), whereas drip irrigation with straw mulch enhanced the yield of tomato (Samui et al. 2020). Both microsprinklers under plastic film and drip irrigation under plastic film treatment increased the tomato fruit yield within greenhouse settings (Li et al. 2022). A few studies that compared drip irrigation with sprinkler and border irrigation revealed that the increase in grain yield was higher in drip irrigation with 0.9–5.4% (Mehmood et al. 2021). From the above studies, it could be concluded that MI increased the yield compared to conventional irrigation methods.

The systematic review, based on a modified version of the PRISMA 2020 approach, proved to be an effective method for searching appropriate literature and excluding irrelevant literature. The systematic literature review revealed a growing body of research on the adoption and impact of MI in recent years. Thus, this emerging research area offers opportunities for contributions from various perspectives.

In terms of prominent authors and nations, Zaccaria D. from the University of California, Davis, USA, stands out as the most influential author, while the United States leads among influential nations in MI publication. Concerning collaboration among authors and institutions, Li Y. stands out as a significant author who collaborated with 25 other authors. Additionally, we identified 10 institutions as the most collaborative, and these institutions had worked together. In terms of keywords, drip irrigation, irrigation, water management, soil moisture, SDI, and crop yield emerge as the most frequently occurring terms across the selected literature.

Among the most referenced authors in the selected literature, a network was constructed with the authors cited at least three times in the collected literature. Coelho was identified as the most cited author in the reference list of the literature corpus. In relation to the most referenced journals in the reference section of the selected literature, a network was established to highlight the most cited journals within the literature corpus. Agricultural Water Management emerged as the most frequently cited journal among the collected literature.

The adoption of MI technologies has significantly contributed to water conservation. According to various authors' findings, factors such as performance expectancy, effort expectancy, behavioural intention, and risk aversion influenced the adoption of MI. Furthermore, adopting MI leads to higher farm income and a shift towards horticultural crops. Attitude also played a pivotal role in technology adoption. Additionally, the adoption of water-saving irrigation technologies influenced access to credit and the costs associated with water extraction, affecting farmers' decisions. Despite farmers' high awareness of MI, technology adoption remains low in certain areas.

Regarding the impact of MI, it generated economic advantages through an increase in the BCR. Drip irrigation specifically resulted in various impacts, including higher chlorophyll content and leaf area index with reduced nitrogen application rates. SDI, in certain instances, enhances water productivity and boosts yields with reduced irrigation water requirements. Overall, MI significantly improved water use efficiency and yield.

These findings were valuable for both newcomers and experts in identifying the top authors and countries in the domain of adoption and the impact of MI. It also enabled the discovery of leading authors and journals in the MI fields, along with thematic clusters prevalent in current research. Additionally, this study provided insights into prominent authors and institutions, their collaborative networks, and trending topics in the field.

All relevant data are included in the paper or its Supplementary Information.

The authors declare there is no conflict of interest.