Abstract: The fruit of Prunus is rich in minerals, antioxidants, flavonoides and glutathione, which contribute significantly to human nutrition and are considered to be one series of the most important commodities consumed worldwide. The fruit firmness declined rapidly after post-harvest, resulting in the decrease of the fruit quality, bad fruit storability and short of shelf life. Aiming to understand the survey of Prunus fruit ripening and softening, and provide a reference to further research the mechanism of fruit ripening and softening of Prunus plant, this paper summarized the proceeding of the physiological changes including respiration, ethylene production, quality related materials, cell wall changes such as structure, composition and enzymes involved in cell wall degradation, progress of gene related to fruit ripening and softening and proteomics research in fruit ripening and softening. It also pointed out the existing problems and proposed the research directions. The paper believed that the current research of fruit ripening and softening of Prunus were concentrated in the changes of cell wall material composition and structure, enzyme activity changes of cell wall degradation related enzyme such as polygalacturonase and β -galactosidase, and the gene cloning and function analysis of cell wall degradation enzyme. The combination of transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and genomics studies will be the development direction of the Prunus plant fruit ripening and softening research.