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[Objective] The Loess Plateau is a great geographical unit of China, which has important strategic significance for national food security and ecological security. Through long-term slope management, comprehensive watershed management, afforestation and other measures, the ecological environment of the Loess Plateau has been significantly improved, but it still faces challenges in such aspects as insufficient rationality of vegetation restoration in local areas, uncoordinated overall planning of the whole basin, and balanced economic development and ecological protection. Under the guidance of the national dual-carbon goal, the future direction and goal of the Loess Plateau ecosystem and agricultural sustainable development should be to support the realization of carbon neutrality, establish an environmentally suitable vegetation community, promote the development of the ecosystem as a whole, and realize the green transformation of the development mode. [Methods] Based on the bibliometrics tool CiteSpace, this paper visually analyzes the relevant literatures on the principle and application of soil regulation in the Loess Plateau published from 1992 to 2023, focusing on the core research strength, research hotspot and research trend in this research field. [Results] (1) From the perspective of the evolution of the number of published papers, the overall trend is rising, and the growth rate is explosive after 2001; (2) From the perspective of publishing institutions, Northwest A&F University has the highest number of publishing institutions in this field, with 2 157; (3) From the perspective of the cooperative relationship between authors, Academician SHAO Mingan and Professor LIU Guobin are the core leaders in this field, and the number of published papers is 141 and 117 respectively. The cooperative network formed by them has been very mature; (4) From the perspective of research hotspots and development trends in this field, the main research hotspots focus on soil moisture, yield, dryland, soil erosion, soil nutrients and vegetation restoration, etc. The future micro theme trend will focus on yield, slope position and nitrogen application amount, while the future macro trend will explore a new model of the coupling and coordinated development of eco-economic-social system. [Conclusion] Based on the results of visual analysis, three perspectives on the principles and application of soil regulation in the Loess Plateau were proposed, including cooperative research, research hotspots and future key development directions.