Abstract: As we entered the 21st Century, the subject of food science and technology has developed rapidly and food science and information science have developed an increasingly close relationship. The aim of this paper is to analyze the quantity and quality of published research papers in the field of food science using bibliometric methods and to give a visual comparison of the disciplinary competitiveness of some countries and representative research institutions in food science. The results showed that from 2010 to 2014, China published the second largest number (17 054) of papers in food science included in Scopus in the world with just 4.6 citations, on an average basis, for each paper, slightly lower than the world average. In spite of the great achievement in terms of the number of publications, there is still a significant gap in terms of the average number of citations per paper and top 10% most cited papers as indicators of the quality of papers between China and the traditional research powers in the world. By analyzing the quantity and quality of papers published by them, Chinese representative organizations enjoyed a high influence and reputation in the international academic field, but the development of food science was unbalanced in different areas of China. By observing the hot topics for researchers worldwide and development trends in the field of food science, China developed 101 research directions with distinctive competencies (DC) from 2010 to 2014. These DC showed the competitive advantages of the main interdisciplinary subjects of food science in China, which would provide references for food science researchers.

Key words: food science, current research situation, hot research topic, interdisciplinary, bibliometrics