Abstract: Cultivation of herbal medicines has become a important industry for development of specialty agriculture, but problem of pesticide residues caused by pesticide abuse has become one of important factors affecting quality of herbal medicines．How to detect pesticide residues in herbal medicines efficiently and rapidly is an urgent problem to be solved．Based on above background, current pesticide residue detection methods were systematically described, such as chromatographic detection, enzyme inhibition rate method, enzyme-linked immunoassay, lateral flow immunoassays method, and some novel immunosensor detection methods．Development prospects of pesticide residue detection methods were discussed．