Programmed cell death (PCD) is essential to the survival and evolution of plants. Recently, the advance in the technology of plant genetics, physiology, molecular and cytological biology supports the study on the phenomena and mechnisms of plant PCD. In respect of phenomena, the significant progress includes the classification of two distinguish types of plant PCD: vacuolar PCD and necrotic PCD. The outstanding progress in mechnisms includes the discovery of the structure of a proteinase family: metacaspases, along with their role in survival/death decision or cell-death type controlling. However, complications in recognizing plant PCD still persist for little is genetically conserved between plants and animals PCD-regulation, so recognition of plant PCD depends on its parallels with more adequately studied animal PCD. Stress-related PCD is even more complicated comparing with developmental PCD because it contains briefly necrotic PCD and features of vacuolar PCD, while developmental PCD can be exclusively attributed to vacuolar PCD. Moreover, stress-related PCD is likely to be confused with non-programmed cell death. Identification of plant PCD consists of multiple methods including molecular biological methods, morphological methods and physiological methods. Up to date, fluorescent probe staining nucleis, which is a combination of molecular and morphological method becomes the most popular technique to label plant PCD and its effect is reinforced by other probes which label cell death or autophagic activity, morphological observation with electron microscope and DNA agarose gel electrophoresis. Still, both more reliable markers and quantification of marked events is required. Stress-related PCD is becoming more important against both biotic and abiotic stress and its identification would potentially improve the research in three respects: (i) correlating the resistances to multiple stresses; (ii) the utilization of disease-resistant genetic resources and (iii) the preservation of germplasm. These applications assist each other and would reciprocally improve the comprehension of the patterns and mechanisms in plant PCD. Stree-related PCD in plant is most profoundly studied in the hypersensitive response (HR) during effectortriggered-immunity (ETI) with recognition of pathogens. However, PCD is by far not confined only within ETI but also associated with a great variety of resistance. Loci related to PCD or other PCD-related process like salicylic or jasmonic metabolism, reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging, redox homeostasis and calcium signaling often contribute to resistance to a great variety of factors. Therefore PCD identification has the potentiality to help in selection in crop breeding and to decipher regulatory pathways and network for stress resistance. One popular application of PCD in crop breeding is the lesion mimic mutants (LMMs). LMMs exhibit intrinsic PCD and can be disease resistant usually at the cost of production. The identification of phenotype concerning PCD could help selecting most fitable LMM genotype to balance production and resistance. LMMs in turn help deciphering PCD pathways. Spatial and temporal heterogeneity exists in LMMs and such heterogeneity is comparatively well studied in PCD in germplasm preservation including the storage of seeds, tissues or cells. Decline in vigor of germplasm corelates with the proliferating of PCD cells, which probably include a process of survival/death decision. Therefore timing, counting and locating PCD cells would assist in monitoring germlasm vigor, understanding the process of deteriotation and deciding whether and when to rescue germplasm resources. As a result of global climate change and population growing pressure and various secondary problems derived from these, breeding stress-resistant crops and preserving germplasm become urgent and emphasize the indentification of stress-related PCD.