README file
Data Set Title: “Dataset for reviewing frontier agriculture in Mediterranean for food and feed production between 2018 and 2023”
Data Set Author: Elisa Appolloni (University of Bologna), ORCID 0000-0001-9561-1557; Giuseppina Pennisi (University of Bologna), ORCID 0000-0001-9377-4811; Vito Aurelio Cerasola (University of Bologna), ORCID 0000-0002-8565-8236; Wubneshe Biru (Kontakt Universität der Bundeswehr München), ORCID 0000-0003-1538-605X; Gertrud Buchenrieder (Kontakt Universität der Bundeswehr München), ORCID 0000-0003-2995-867X; Tanai Sıdkı Uyar (EUROSOLAR Türkiye - Maltepe-İstanbul); Y. Islam Yavuz (EUROSOLAR Türkiye - Maltepe-İstanbul); Francesco Orsini (University of Bologna), ORCID 0000-0001-6956-7054.
Data Set Contact Person: Vito Aurelio Cerasola (University of Bologna), ORCID 0000-0002-8565-8236, vito.cerasola@unibo.it  
Data Set License: this data set is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/  
Publication Year: 2025
Project Info: FrontAg Nexus (Impact of Climate-Smart & Water-Saving Frontier Agriculture on WEFE Nexus in Arid Mediterranean Regions), funded by European Union, PRIMA Programme, Grant Agreement num. 2242; https://frontagnexus.eu/. 
Data set Contents
The data set consists of: 
•	1 quantitative data file saved in Excel format “FrontAg_WP1_Dataset_Frontieragriculture_OA.xlsx”
•	1 README file saved in .rtf format “FrontAg_WP1_Dataset_Frontieragriculture_OA.rtf”
Data set Documentation
Abstract
The following dataset was used for the publication Appolloni, E., Pennisi, G., Cerasola, V.A., Biru, W., Buchenrieder, G., Uyar, T.S., Yavuz, Y.İ. and Orsini, F. (2025). Frontier agriculture systems in the Mediterranean region: current status and future opportunities. Acta Hortic. 1422, 69-78. The dataset includes scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals accessed by Scopus by the use of selected relevant keywords to review frontier agriculture systems in Mediterranean for feed and food production. The frontier agriculture systems included are hydroponics, aquaponics, vermiculture, insect farming, rooftop agriculture, and saline agriculture.
Content of the file
File FrontAg_WP1_Dataset_Frontieragriculture_OA.xlsx contains different sheets, one per each frontier agriculture system, where the paper resulting from the use of the selected keywords in Scopus database. Each sheet contains information related to the Authors, Title, Year of publication, Journal, Quartile of the journal, DOI, Abstract. Other information is included too, including the Country where the research was conducted, the main topic discussed in the paper, type of product object of the research (food, feed, or other), and crop specie cultivated.
Notes 
The data are presented in the following publication:
Appolloni, E., Pennisi, G., Cerasola, V.A., Biru, W., Buchenrieder, G., Uyar, T.S., Yavuz Y.I., and Orsini, F. 2025. Frontier agriculture systems in the Mediterranean region: current status and future opportunities. Acta horticolturae, 1422, 69-78. https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2025.1422.10
Methodologies 
The papers were selected using a combination of three different groups of keywords. The first keyword group refers to the dimension of food and feed production. The second one to the frontier agriculture system, and the third one to the Mediterranean countries (including Jordan). Within one group, to mutually exclude each keyword when one is selected, the locution “OR” is used to separate the different keywords. The keywords of each group are factorially combined with the keywords of the remaining two groups using the locution “AND”. The searching strings have been constructed combining 3 groups of keywords (Table 1), through a factorial combination of thematic research “AND” frontier agriculture cultivation systems “AND” Mediterranean countries.

Group 1: Food and feed production	Group 2: Frontier agriculture system 	Group 3: Mediterranean countries	
“food product*” OR “yield” OR “fodder” OR “nutraceutical*” OR “vegetable crop*” OR “feed” OR “medicinal*” OR “officinal*” OR “aromatic*” OR “forage” OR “animal feed” OR “vegetable*”. 	
Hydroponic: “hydroponic*” OR “soilless” OR “aeroponic*” OR “controlled environment” OR “vertical farm*” OR “plant factor*” OR “building integrated agriculture” 
- Aquaponic: “aquaponic*” OR “recirculating aquaculture*” OR “RAS” 
- Vermiculture: “vermiculture” OR “vermicompost” 
- Insect farming: “insect farming” OR “insect production” 
- Rooftop agriculture: “rooftop greenhouse*” OR “rooftop farm*” OR “rooftop agriculture” OR “building integrated agriculture” 
- Saline agriculture: “saline agriculture” OR “saline farm*” OR “biosaline agriculture” OR “biosaline farm*” OR “halophytic plant*” 
	“Mediterranean” OR “Spain” OR “France” OR “Italy” OR “Malta” OR “Slovenia” OR “Croatia” OR “Greece” OR “Türkiye” OR “Lebanon” OR “Israel” OR “Cyprus” OR “Morocco” OR “Algeria” OR “Tunisia” OR “Egypt” OR “Jordan” 

List of variables 
Column name	Description	
Authors	The authors that conducted the research	
Title	The title of the paper	
Year	Publication year of the paper	
Source title	Name of the journal where the paper is published	
DOI	The DOI link of the paper 	
Abstract	Full abstract of the paper	
Document Type	Typology of the paper (if book, book chapter, article, or conference paper)	
Open Access	If the journal where the paper is published is open access (gold, green) or not	
Topics	Main topics discussed in the paper, based on the personal assessment of the authors of the present dataset	
Country	Country or geographic region where the research is conducted	
Type of system	Specific typology of the frontier agriculture system	
Type of product	Typology of food or feed product (food, fodder, vegetables, nutraceutical crops)	
Specie	Crop specie cultivated