Peach (Prunus persica (L.) Batsch) is one of the most predominant stone fruits in Rosaceae family. The broad climate adaption, diverse cultivation region and good fruit taste make it one of the favorate fruits by consumers. Improving fruit quality and enhancing disease/pest resistance are always a focus for peach genetists and breeders to follow with interests. This paper reviews the main achievements on linkage map and physical map construction, development of various molecular markers, whole genome sequencing and transcriptome sequencing for peach in recent years, and also elaborates the applications of genome wide association study (GWAS) with high density SNP markers in peach and other plant crops. This review also provides a theoretical basis for GWAS analysis in the future study to identify high efficient markers of targeted traits for peach.