Taking the Web of Science and Derwent Innovation database as the main data sources, a comprehensive analysis of research papers and patents referring to crop breeding in 2017 was performed from many aspects such as the number of documents, the state, institution and research topics based on bibliometrics,. The results showed that China and the United States contributed most to the science and technology output of crop breeding. However, the two countries exhibited different characteristics in terms of R D subjects and patent layouts, therefore, they have their own characteristics.