Abstract:    International cooperation in agricultural science and technology is an important way to promote agricultural development and build a new type of international relations. However, the current research on the driving mechanism of agricultural science and technology cooperation is not mature at home and abroad. And the systematic research on the development trends and evolutionary characteristics of agricultural science and technology cooperation in the basin is insufficient. This paper constructed a driving force framework for international cooperation in agricultural science and technology, including the feedback effect of specialization. The main data in this paper came from agricultural papers co-authored by the six Lancang-Mekong countries from 1994 to 2019, which were collected in the Web of Science database. CiteSpace software was used to analyze the characteristics of co-occurrence network of cooperative institutions, disciplines, and keywords, to investigate the specialization of agricultural science and technology cooperation in the Lancang-Mekong River region. Then, an econometric model was constructed to further verify the effects and impacts of specialization, agricultural production resources and development needs on agricultural science and technology cooperation in the Lancang-Mekong Basin. The study found that: firstly, although the scope of agricultural science and technology cooperation among Lancang-Mekong countries was expanding, the cooperative institutions still showed a trend of centralized development. The universities and research institutions of China and Thailand played a dominant role in the cooperation, while the cooperation among institutions of the other four countries was relatively weak. Cooperative disciplines of agricultural science and technology in the basin showed the trend of cross integration. Agronomy ran through the whole course of the cooperation. Besides agronomy, the cooperative disciplines have also expanded to entomology, nutrition, environmental science, infectious diseases, and engineering. The gradual diversification of discipline categories and the increasing cross-integration of disciplines reflected the continuous expansion and deepening of cooperation in agricultural science and technology in the region. The cooperative research frontiers of agricultural science and technology in the basin were characterized by a tendency toward complexity and systematization. The focus of cooperation has shifted from simple agricultural productivity to the comprehensive benefits of agricultural complex ecosystems, and more attention has been paid to the coordinated development of agricultural science and technology, ecological environment, and social economy. Secondly, the feedback effect caused by specialization and the induced effect caused by agricultural development demand were the two main driving forces of agricultural science and technology cooperation in the Lancang-Mekong region. The centralization of cooperative institutions limited the expansion of cooperation, which would have a negative impact on cooperation. Both the cross-integration of cooperative disciplines and the complex systematization of cooperative frontiers contributed to the deepening of cooperation, which had a positive effect on the promotion of cooperation. The needs of domestic development of agricultural industry and expansion of international trade of agricultural products in countries along the Lancang-Mekong River Basin have both played a positive role in promoting the development of agricultural science and technology cooperation within the basin. At present, the potential impact of agricultural production resources such as land, labor force and technology on the cooperation in agricultural science and technology in the Lancang-Mekong Basin has not yet played a role.

Key words: Lancang-Mekong Basin, agricultural science and technology cooperation, evolutionary characteristics, influencing factor