A new method was developed for the detection of ethephon residue in fruits and vegetables by QuEChERS/high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.The samples were extracted with water，and cleaned up with PSA and GCB.As the chromatography and MS conditions were optimized，the analysis of the target compound was performed under electrospray positive ion source and multiple reaction monitoring mode（MRM），and the quantitation was carried out by the external standard method with the blank matrix.The calibration curve was linear in the range of 0.5-50 mg/L with a correlation coefficient not less than 0.995.The recoveries of ethephon in cucumber，tomato，pepper，apple and banana matrices at three spiked levels of 2.5，5.0，10.0 mg/kg ranged from 80.5% to 92.7%，and the relative standard deviations were in the range of 3.1%-8.3%.The method is simple，fast and safety，and is suitable for the confirmation and quantification of ethephon residue in fruits and vegetables．