Cytoplasmic male sterility(CMS)plays an important role in utilizing the heterosis of radish and related Brassica crops, at the same time, the investigation of CMS fertility mechanism will facilitate dissecting the molecular mechanism underlying nuclear-cytoplasmic interaction. The main types of CMS sterility in radish include Ogura, Kos, NWB and DCGMS. Ogura CMS originates from Japanese wild radish whose microspore is mostly aborted at tetrad-uninucleate stage, and NWB and DCGMS CMS originate from European wild radish whose microspore abortion occurs at the uninucleate stage. Several CMS sterility genes including orf138,orf125,orf463 and orf463a,and the fertility restoring genes including Rfo,Rf3,Rfs,Rfk1 and Rfd1,were identified. With the investigation of the genetic model, structural characteristics and interaction of sterile and fertility restoring(Rf)gene, the mechanism underlying the Ogura CMS and fertility restoration have been clarified. That is, the PPR-B protein encoded by Rf gene specifically binds the mRNA of orf138,and acts as a ribosome blocker, and it specifically prevents translation elongation, thus reducing the content of ORF138 protein to restore fertility; however, the binding site of the PPR-B protein needs to be identified. In addition, the progress in the fields of radish CMS sterile cytoplasmic utilization, including the development of fertility restoring gene markers, the transferring male sterility, and the sterile cytoplasmic source for a related species, was reviewed in the paper, and the existing problems and research priorities in the field of genetic mechanism and utilization of CMS were also prospected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]