Abstract: The optimal control technology of the microbial fermentation process is a crucial part of fermentation engineering. The researches on bioprocess optimal control techniques in recent years are reviewed from two points，modeling and control methods. The modeling techniques include the mechanism based methods，the experience based ‘black-box’ methods，and the hybrid methods by combining different modeling techniques. The progress of the research in the model based optimal control strategies are reviewed. It demonstrates that an efficient method to deal with the control problems in bioprocess optimization is to construct a dynamic optimization controller，based on hybrid modeling and multi-objective optimization techniques. Finally，some important problems which need to be resolved in the implementation of fermentation optimal control are presented.