Technology level evaluation in agricultural science and technology

It is very important to evaluate technology level to establish S&T strategic plan. Technology level is generally evaluated by expert opinion survey because the range of technology level evaluation is broad and one technology can be divided by several technologies. In this study, two-round Delphi survey was used to evaluate technology level and SCI publication and USA patent were analyzed to evaluate research performance. Agriculture field includes seven categories such as agricultural engineering, agricultural biotechnology, etc. Technology level was expressed numerically such as % of top-level country. In terms of publication and patent analysis, quantitative and qualitative comparisons were performed by using several indicators, such as the number of publication, citation index which is the internationally standardized number of citation, scientific strength, etc. USA was ranked to world top position in all categories of agriculture field in expert Delphi survey and SCI publication and USA patent analysis. But the rank among major countries was different between expert Delphi survey and research performance analysis. Experts graded the higher rank to Korea than research performance analysis. Both evaluation results from expert Delphi survey and research performance analysis should be considered to establish agricultural S&T strategic plan not to distort technology evaluation results.