Abstract: This paper summarizes the developing history, and the components, the characteristics and the selecting criterion of substrates in soil-less culture of vegetables in China. It describes the main methods to evaluate the properties of substrates, including measurement of their physical, chemical and biological characters, comprehensive research on their physical-chemical characters and growth indexes of vegetables, research on their effects on quality of vegetables and environment, and research on their economic characters. Furthermore, it suggests that, in the future, attentions should be paid to the studies of highly-efficient, ecologically-organic, environmentally-conservative and feasibly-disinfected substrates.