Objective: To provide strategies for development of reference medicinal materials of ethnic drugs. Methods: The difficulties during the development of reference medicinal materials of ethnic drugs, including difficulties of raw material collection and identification, imperfect standards, weak researches etc were analyzed. Results: The development scheme of reference medicinal materials of ethnic drugs was proposed, including raw material collection and selection mehods, pharmacognostical identification, physical and chemical inspection, uniformity and stability test according to the requirements of the development of national drug reference materials. Conclusion: Although the research and development of reference medicinal materials of ethnic drugs had weak foundation with many difficulties, and started late, this work is of great significance to the quality evaluation and supervision of ethnic drugs, and can also lay the foundation for the research and development of ethnic drugs.