Quantitative real-time PCR is a technology monitoring the whole process of DNA amplification in real time based on the accumulation of fluorescent signals.With high sensitivity，good specificity，accurate quantification，short time consumption，and simple operation，this technology has a wide application prospect in microbial analysis，food research，clinical diagnosis，early tumor research，and genetic disease research.It has been gradually applied in the fields of reference gene screening of medicinal plants，synthetic biology of Chinese medicine，biosynthesis route of active components in Chinese medicine，etc.By reviewing the papers published by the National Center of Biotechnology Information(NCBI)，China National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI)，China Science Periodical Database(CSPD) and other databases，we introduced the application of quantitative real-time PCR in gene expression analysis of medicinal plants in the recent five years.