I am installing the R package patchwork in a self-created R virtual environment in miniconda3 through the command conda install -c conda-forge r-patchwork after activating the virtual env. In the list of R packages to install, I find many packages irrelevant to patchwork. I wish to ask why so many irrelevant packages are installed and if it is possible to install only patchwork and its dependencies?

Here is a screenshot showing many packages irrelevant to patchwork are installed using the code above:

All the packages are relevant. While the immediate dependencies of r-patchwork are only r-base, r-ggplot and r-gtable, those each have their own dependencies. One can use Mamba's repoquery functionality to generate the full dependency graph.

## using Mambaforge container
$ docker run --rm -it condaforge/mambaforge:latest

## create environment with r-patchwork as only spec
(base) $ mamba create -qyn foo r-patchwork
# this installs 139 packages...

## activate environment
(base) $ conda activate foo

## show the dependency graph for r-patchwork
(foo) $ mamba repoquery depends --tree r-patchwork

r-patchwork[1.1.2]
  ├─ r-base[4.2.2]
  │  ├─ _r-mutex[1.0.1]
  │  ├─ bwidget[1.9.14]
  │  │  └─ tk[8.6.12]
  │  │     ├─ libgcc-ng[12.2.0]
  │  │     │  ├─ _libgcc_mutex[0.1]
  │  │     │  └─ _openmp_mutex[4.5]
  │  │     │     ├─ _libgcc_mutex already visited
  │  │     │     └─ libgomp[12.2.0]
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  │  │     └─ libzlib[1.2.13]
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  │  │  │  └─ sysroot_linux-64[2.12]
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  │  │        │     │     ├─ r-glue already visited
  │  │        │     │     ├─ r-cli already visited
  │  │        │     │     ├─ r-rlang already visited
  │  │        │     │     └─ r-lifecycle already visited
  │  │        │     ├─ r-vctrs already visited
  │  │        │     └─ r-pkgconfig[2.0.3]
  │  │        │        └─ r-base already visited
  │  │        └─ r-tibble already visited
  │  ├─ r-rlang already visited
  │  ├─ r-withr already visited
  │  ├─ r-tibble already visited
  │  ├─ r-mass[7.3_58.1]
  │  │  ├─ r-base already visited
  │  │  └─ libgcc-ng already visited
  │  ├─ r-mgcv[1.8_41]
  │  │  ├─ r-base already visited
  │  │  ├─ libgcc-ng already visited
  │  │  ├─ libblas already visited
  │  │  ├─ liblapack already visited
  │  │  ├─ r-matrix[1.5_3]
  │  │  │  ├─ r-base already visited
  │  │  │  ├─ libgcc-ng already visited
  │  │  │  ├─ libblas already visited
  │  │  │  ├─ liblapack already visited
  │  │  │  └─ r-lattice[0.20_45]
  │  │  │     ├─ r-base already visited
  │  │  │     └─ libgcc-ng already visited
  │  │  └─ r-nlme[3.1_160]
  │  │     ├─ r-base already visited
  │  │     ├─ libgcc-ng already visited
  │  │     ├─ libgfortran5 already visited
  │  │     ├─ libgfortran-ng already visited
  │  │     └─ r-lattice already visited
  │  └─ r-scales[1.2.1]
  │     ├─ r-base already visited
  │     ├─ r-r6 already visited
  │     ├─ r-lifecycle already visited
  │     ├─ r-farver[2.1.1]
  │     │  ├─ r-base already visited
  │     │  ├─ libgcc-ng already visited
  │     │  └─ libstdcxx-ng already visited
  │     ├─ r-labeling[0.4.2]
  │     │  └─ r-base already visited
  │     ├─ r-munsell[0.5.0]
  │     │  ├─ r-base already visited
  │     │  └─ r-colorspace[2.0_3]
  │     │     ├─ r-base already visited
  │     │     └─ libgcc-ng already visited
  │     ├─ r-rcolorbrewer[1.1_3]
  │     │  └─ r-base already visited
  │     └─ r-viridislite[0.4.1]
  │        └─ r-base already visited
  └─ r-gtable already visited

Upon inspection, one concludes that the additional R packages are r-ggplot dependencies. OP is seeing expected behavior.

Some Unnecessary Packages

Prompted by this question, I found that the r-isoband package in Conda Forge was unnecessarily including r-testthat as a runtime dependency when it was really only needed for running tests. Conda Forge now has removed this. I can report that using the same procedure as above now results in an environment with 16 fewer R packages (123 instead of 139).