Charm-baryon enhancement and charm fragmentation fractions in small systems measured with ALICE

Recent measurements of charm-baryon production at midrapidity by the ALICE collaboration show baryon-to-meson yield ratios significantly higher than those measured in e+e− collisions, suggesting that the charm fragmentations are not universal across different collisions systems. Thus, measurements of charm-baryon production are crucial to study the charm quark hadronisation in proton–proton (pp) collisions. In proton–lead (p–Pb) collisions, the measurements of charm baryons provide important information about cold nuclear matter effects and help to understand how the possible presence of collective effects could modify the production of heavy-flavour hadrons. In this contribution, the most recent results on open charm-hadron production in pp and p–Pb collisions measured by ALICE are discussed.