Abstract: With the introducion of fingerprint concept into many fields, fingerprinting technology has developed various forms. The fingerprinting was classified into biological fingerprint which took the biological macromolecules as test object and chemical fingerprint which took the chemical components extracted from the plant as the test object. The origin, application range, differences and other aspects of fingerprinting techniques were reviewed in this paper. In addition, the application of different fingerprinting techniques in plant germplasm resources was summarized.