Background In the context of global freshwater shortage, the search for alternative water sources has attracted wide attention from researchers around the world, the brackish water is widely distributed and abundant, as an important supplement and alternative resource for freshwater, getting high attention. The rational utilization of brackish water can not only solve the shortage of water resources, increase the irrigation guarantee rate, but also improve the problem of reducing farmers' production due to the deterioration of soil and water ecological environment.

Methods This study is based on the CNKI and Web of Science core database, using CiteSpace bibliometrics software to analyze literature on agricultural brackish water irrigation, aiming at visual presentation of the research authors, institutions, research fields and key words of agricultural brackish water irrigation, the knowledge structure of current international research, as well as research hotspots and regions, were more clearly obtained, aiming to reveal the development and research frontier of agricultural brackish water irrigation.

Results 1) From 1999 to 2019, the number of publications related to agricultural brackish water irrigation fluctuated and increased, and a core author group composed of YANG Jinsong, WANG Quanjiu and LI Peiyue and HUO Zailin was formed; various research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xinjiang Agricultural University, China Agricultural University, and University of California Riverside, and other research institutions with a high number of publications, the core author group and various institutions mainly existed in small teams and distributed. 2) At present, domestic and foreign research on agricultural brackish water irrigation mainly focuses on agricultural basic science, physical geography and surveying and mapping, crops, agricultural engineering, water resources, environmental science and ecology, agronomy and other disciplines. The research on the interoperability of knowledge content among various disciplines is related to salt water. 3) Research on the internal mechanism of brackish water irrigation methods on soil water and salt transport, research on crop growth and development, research on desalination strategies, improvement of salt accumulation, etc., and the construction of different detection methods (models, stable isotopes) may become a new research hotspot in recent years.

Conculsions Water shortage is one of the main factors leading to soil cracking and ecologically environmental deterioration in arid and semi-arid areas, which restricts the development of global economy. Therefore, by summarizing and analyzing the hot issues and future trends of agricultural brackish water utilization, it is helpful for researchers to fully understand the current situation of international research and provide theoretical basis for it.