Bibliometric analysis of research on plant exosomes/extracellular vesicles: current status, hotspots, and trends

This study performed a comprehensive bibliometric analysis on 1373 valid publications of plant exosomes/extracellular vesicles from 2010 to 2026, retrieved from CNKI, WoSCC and PubMed and screened manually. Microsoft Excel 2019 and CiteSpace 6.3. R1 were used for data analysis, including literature trend statistics, collaborative network mapping, and keyword and co-cited reference mining, to clarify the field's research status, hotspots and evolutionary trends. The results showed a significant exponential growth in annual publications (R 2 = 0.983), peaking in 2025 (25.1% of total output), indicating the field's rapid development. Geographically, research spans 55 countries/regions, with China (405 publications, leading in output) and the US (179 publications, centrality = 0.6, core bridging role) as the core, forming a close collaboration; Germany, Italy and South Korea are important nodes, constructing a multi-country cross-regional collaboration pattern. Cited journals reflect strong interdisciplinarity, with Scientific Reports ranking first in citations, and high-impact comprehensive journals (Science, Nature) and professional journals in plant science, nanomedicine both being highly cited. Author collaboration presents a core-periphery structure, with Cai Qiang, Emiliani Carla as core scholars; different teams focus on mechanism-based basic research and function-based applied research, complementing each other. Keyword analysis identified drug delivery, anti-tumor therapy and plant-derived exosome-like nanovesicles as core hotspots; the research focus has shifted from early structural identification and basic mechanism research to molecular regulation exploration, and recently to application-oriented research, with plant-derived exosome-related keywords showing continuous citation bursts since 2025. Co-cited references revealed the field's core knowledge base formed in 2017–2022, covering biological function validation, structural characterization and engineering application. Further analysis found the field is supported by isolation technique optimization, green drug delivery platform development and clinical indication expansion; plant exosomes have unique advantages over animal-derived ones in cost, biocompatibility and gastrointestinal stability. This study comprehensively outlines the global research landscape of plant exosomes/extracellular vesicles, revealing its application-driven, mechanism-supported development trend, and provides scientific references for subsequent fundamental and translational research in this field.