Frontiers and emerging topics in a century of Silkie chicken research: insights, challenges, and opportunities.

Silkie chickens are a unique breed renowned for their pigmentation, food and medicine homology properties, and distinctive appearance, making them highly valuable in exhibitions, as pets, in medicinal cuisine, and as a model for melanin research. Despite their vast potential, the growing volume of publications and patents related to Silkie chicken highlights the critical need for systematic organization, summarization, and analysis of this wealth of information. For the first time, this study employs bibliometric tools to summarize and analyze 114 years of research on Silkie chicken. Our study demonstrates that academic studies primarily focus on their nutritional value, melanin production, and genetic mechanisms, while patents emphasize food formulations, breeding methods, and purebred identification. Although there has been significant growth in publications and citations since 2001, international collaboration remains limited. This study presents the need for integrated and multidisciplinary research to unlock the full potential of Silkie chicken and provides a foundational framework for future studies and applications.