【Objective】Soil-borne diseases are important factors affecting yield and quality of crops. In order to understand the current research status and trends of soil-borne diseases, we conducted a bibliometric analysis. 【Method】Based on the core collection database of the Web of Science, bibliometric analysis was conducted using the CiteSpace knowledge map analysis tool, VOSviewer visual analysis software and HistCite Citation Analysis Tool, for number of publications and their distributions in disciplines, contributor countries (regions) and institutions, carrier journals, authors and main scholars involved, hotspots and trends in the field of soil-borne crop diseases.【Result】(1) During the period between 1990 and 2018, the number of research papers addressing the topic of soil-borne disease increased. It is important to continue supporting soil scientists in their research on soil-borne diseases; (2) The United States, China, Australia and France are the major contributors of academic articles in this field, and have established close cooperation relationships with each other in recent years; (3) “Phytopathology” and “Plant Disease” are the top two journals in local citation frequency. “Soil Biology & Biochemistry”, “Plant Disease”, “Plant and Soil”, and “Applied Soil Ecology ” are the main journals that have high impacts in the field of soil-borne diseases in the recent 5 years; (4) Qirong Shen, Christopher A Gilligan, Mark Mazzola, David M Weller, Aocheng Cao, and Zucong Cai are the most productive scholars in this field; (5) Biocontrol is a research hotspot in this field. The most typical soil-borne pathogenic microorganisms studied are Rhizoctonia solani , Verticillium dahliae, Fusarium oxysporum , and Ralstonia solanacearum; (6) The research in this field tends in future to focus mainly on relationships between soil microbial diversity and soil-borne diseases and between host plants and pathogenic microorganisms, and development of management practices effective to prevent and control those soil-borne diseases.【Conclusion】This paper is based on bibliometric data of the researches in the field of soil-borne disease. In recent years, intensive studies have been conducted on soil-borne diseases. With the aid of the high-throughput sequencing technology, the knowledge of soil microbial communities and rhizosphere microorganisms has been greatly expanded. Application of the next generation sequencing technology to the study of soil-borne diseases will help us explore interactions between pathogenic microorganisms and soil microbial communities, and develop more effective methods to control soil-borne diseases.