RESEARCH TRENDS OF BEGOMOVIRUSES FROM FIRST DETECTION TO GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, DIVERSITY, AND PREVALENCE

Begomoviruses are single-stranded (ss) and circular DNA viruses that are the main threat to world food security. Since they were first identified as a distinct group of viruses, at least one begomovirus (tomato yellow leaf curl virus), has become a global problem. During last two decades, the movement of agricultural produce globally and introduction of cryptic whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) vector complex have helped to evolve the recombinant and mutated strains of begomoviruses into diverse geographical areas. Different technologies, like polymerase chain reaction, rolling circle amplification followed by high throughput sequencing technologies have exclusively been used in detection and characterization of ssDNA begomovirus complexes. To encompasses and analyze the literature developed in begomoviruses research, a systematic analysis was carried using Scopus database platform. R-based Bibliometrix interface and VOSViewer were utilized to study different aspects such as publication growth trend, core journals, leading authors and countries as well as to identify the collaboration partnerships among different authors from various countries followed by co-occurrences related to authors search keywords. Considerably high publication growth was witnessed highlighting the virus diversity followed by evolution of recombinant viral strains and host virus interaction. The advancement in technology reveals the significant effect of various discovery and distribution parameters on the begomoviruses. This is the first comprehensive study to evaluate both the quality and quantity of begomoviruses research, since its first detection