Abstract: Soybean is an important grain and oil crop.Salt stress imposes negative impacts on growth, nodulation, agronomic traits, seed quality and seed number, and reduces the yield of soybean as a result.Understanding the effect of salt stress on soybean growth and development can help breeders, based on pertinency, select a precise phenotype in salt tolerant breeding.Molecular marker assisted selection (MAS) is an efficient breeding method, which can promote the salt-tolerance breeding process in soybean.Furthermore, understanding the mechanism of salt tolerance at the gene level in soybean provides the reference for the "assembly" of salt tolerant genes and the cultivation of salt tolerant varieties.This paper reviewed the effect of salt stress on soybean growth and development, introduced molecular genetic researches of salt tolerance, and salt tolerant genes and mechanisms of ion-channel in soybean, which would provide the valuable reference for salt -tolerance breeding of soybean as well as a theoretical basis for accelerating the precise salt-tolerance breeding of soybean.