Low temperature is one of abiotic stresses limiting the geographical location suitable for growing corps and periodically account for significant losses in plant productivity, so it's important for agriculture to improve the cold resistance of corps. Many plants can acquire increased frost tolerance after a period of exposure to low, non-freezing temperature through a complex adaptive process called cold acclimation. In the past ten years, with the great advance in the researches of molecular mechanism of cold acclimation, the studies of genetic engineering for cold resistance in plants have also been carried out extensively. Currently, there are two kinds of genes used in plant cold-resistant genetic engineering, Which are protective genes and regulating genes. Many studies indicate both kinds of genes have good prospect for improving the cold resistance of plants. However, there are also many problems in this field to be solved immediately.