Based on the patent data of China’s grain industry collaboration from 1985 to 2019 and considering the actual development of industry-university-research collaboration， this paper divides the industry-university-research collaboration network in the grain industry into five evolutionary stages， and adopts social network analysis to explore the dynamic evolution of the overall structure and subjective features of the collaboration network. The results show that the scale and scope of the industry-university-research collaboration network in China’s grain industry are obviously expanded with increasingly significant scale-free characteristic， small-world network and core-periphery structure. In the industry-university-research collaboration network of grain industry， enterprises， research institutes and other innovative subjects respectively act as leaders and agents， participants and mediators， as well as supporters and service providers. The paper puts forward that the industry-university-research collaboration in China’s grain industry should adhere to the core position of innovation and promote the collaboration in both scope and depth. Firstly， the enterprises should widen the scale of innovation from three dimensions of longitudinal prolongation，horizontal expansion and lateral extension. Secondly， the universities should take initiative in collaboration with enterprises and other innovative subjects with regard to industry-university-research in the form of talents exchange，interdisciplinary cooperation and technology crossover to advance the coordinated development of grain science and technology innovation. Lastly， the government should continue to perfect the policy system of industry-university-research collaboration in the grain industry.