Mapping Smart Vertical Farming in Cultivation of Herbaceous Medicinal Plants using Bibliometric Analysis

Food security is an important domain that is having an increased demand in the modern era of urbanization and modernization. With an increased population shifting to urban areas, deforestation and eradication of arable land are growing at an uncontrollable pace, globally. Scarcity of land, water, and other diminishing natural resources are the results of the soaring shift of population to urban areas. Lack of manpower and the demolishing availabilities of agricultural resources add to the negative effect on traditional agricultural methods and thereby, food production. Consequently, the degradation of the health of the urban habitats is caused. The cultivation of medicinal plants is thus another upcoming agricultural concern arising in many countries worldwide. Harsh and extreme weather conditions and arid lands make traditional farming even more difficult in some parts of the world which in turn causes an exacerbation of the food gap. Thus, sustainable, intelligent, and feasible solutions to enhance the qualitative and quantitative production of medicinal plants are the need of the hour. Greenhouses came up as a solution to combat the issues and facilitate qualitative and quantitative crop productivity but real-time issues occur while controlling and monitoring its microclimate while growers focus on cultivating the optimal growth of the herbaceous plants. The authors of this research work performed a multi-dimensional systematic survey on the interference of smart precision farming methods on the cultivation of various herbaceous medicinal plants.