Abstract: Soybean (Glycine max) is an important oil crop, the yield and quality is not stable due to the impact of the external environment. Conventional breeding and biotechnology has played a huge role in the development of plants with high-yield, high-quality and resilience. In order to obtain the plants with good traits and cultivate new varieties of soybean rapidly, this paper reviewed the improved methods, basic principles and applications of soybean from conventional breeding and biotechnology to provide references for the soybean breeding research.