Abstract: Abiotic stress is one of the primary factors that affect plant growth and yield. Recently microRNAs （miRNAs） have been found to play an essential role in regulating plant abiotic stress responses. miRNAs can base-pair with mRNAs of target genes and regulate their expression post-transcriptionally by cleavage or translation inhibition. Therefore，miRNAs play a critical role in plant growth and development，morphogenesis，stress responses and many other physiological processes in plants. In this review，we summarized the recent advances in the biosynthesis，degradation and action modes of plant miRNAs. Particularly we introduced plant miRNA-mediated response mechanisms to abiotic stresses responses including drought stress，salt stress，high and low temperature stress，nutrient supply stress，metal ion stress and so on in detail. Finally we proposed the perspectives for plant miRNA study based on the still existing problems in current plant miRNA research such as the ambiguousity of subcellular localization of plant miRNA metabolism，the lacking of efficient research tools for plant miRNA functions and unclarity of miRNA-mediated response mechanisms to environmental stresses.