A great deal of concern has been aroused among the scientific community about the extensive use of carbamate pesticides and their residues in vegetables.A method combining HPLC,a post-column derivation device and a fluorescent detector was used to determine residues of ten carbamate pesticides (aldicarb sulfoxide,aldicarb sulfone,oxamyl,methomyl,3-hydroxy carbofuran,aldicarb,propoxur,carbofuran,carbaryl and methiocarb) in 68 vegetable and 32 soil samples under four different cultivation systems (traditional kailyard,open field vegetable base,green house and paddy) were collected from a certain city in South Jiangsu.in March 2003 and July 2003.The results reveal that residues of carbamate pesticides were mostly found to be in the acceptable range from 0.1 μ g kg^-1 to 10 μ g kg^-1 in the soil samples and from 0.2 μ g kg^-1 to 23 μ g kg^-1 in the veg 2 etable samples.Residues of 3-hydroxy carbofuran and methiocarb were detected in all the soil samples with the highest value reaching 10 μ g kg^-1 and 1.64 μ g kg^-1,respectively,and residues of the rest were only in a few samples.What is even more noteworthy is that residue of 3-hydroxy carbofuran,a degradation product of carbofuran,was detected in all the soil and vegetable samples.And its concentration in water spinach,eggplant and celery ranged from 0.4 mg kg^-1 to 4.8 mg kg^-1,which may result from differences between vegetables in efficiency in bio-utilization of 3-hydroxy carbofuran.Meanwhile,under different cultivation systems residue of 3-hydroxy carbofuran in soils was related to that in some vegetables,like tomato,pepper and shang-haiqing,but not statistically significant.