From Frontier to Hotspot: Co-producing the Brazilian Savannah through Soybean Science

This article examines how soybean research and the Brazilian Cerrado biome have been mutually constituted through intertwined scientific, technological, and political processes over the past four decades. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS), it approaches both as co-produced sociotechnical assemblages rather than pre-given natural entities. Based on a scientometric and semantic analysis of 1,005 publications (1981–2024) from Web of Science and Scopus, it traces a shift from an agronomic “frontier” paradigm to an increasingly diversified, interdisciplinary, and globally networked field. Quantitative indicators (growth curves, regressions, Shannon diversity) show expanding institutional and thematic diversity. At the same time, semantic networks reveal the rise of new mediators—such as no-tillage, biodiversity, and satellite monitoring—that reconfigured relations among science, technology, and governance. Soybean science contributed to naturalizing the Cerrado first as an agricultural frontier and later as an ecological hotspot, while ecological and political controversies reshaped the meanings and trajectories of soybean research itself. The article argues that soybean and Cerrado are not fixed entities but open-ended epistemic and political constructions whose futures hinge on how science, technology, and politics continue to be rearticulated in the Brazilian landscape.