Bacterial typing technology can be used for qualitative and traceability of contaminated bacteria in food,as well as quality control and supervision of probiotics in food.In this paper,the principles,applications,advantages and disadvantages of commonly used research methods for bacterial typing in food detection were reviewed,including pulsed field gel electrophoresis(PFGE),restriction fragment length polymorphism(RFLP),amplified fragment length polymorphism(AFLP),randomly amplified polymorphic DNA(RAPD),multi site sequence typing(MLST),multi site variable number tandem repeat analysis(MLVA)based on molecular biology methods,matrix assisted laser desorption ionization time of flight mass spectrometry(MALDI-TOF MS),Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy(FTIR)and other technologies based on mass spectrometry and spectroscopy.