Drought has become one of the key environmental factors limiting the development of agriculture in China. Due to fixed growth， plants cannot actively escape from stress when external water factors change， and can only rely on their own mechanisms to resist external stress. Therefore， studies on plant drought resistance are becoming very urgent. This article reviewed the previous researches related with plant drought tolerance. The focus was on exploring the classification of desiccation-tolerant plants， the response mechanisms of their morphological structure， physiological and molecular level during dehydration and rehydration to provide new ideas for mining desiccation-tolerant genes， creating desiccation-tolerant germplasm resources and breeding new desiccation-tolerant varieties.