Turnip (Brassica rapa L.) is a cruciferous Brassica plant, which is often used as medicine and food in the plateau area of China. It has anti-cancer, anti-hypoxia, anti-oxidation, anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory activities. However, the current medicinal research and development of turnip is not comprehensive, and the future research direction is not clear. Therefore, this paper used “radish” and “Brassica rapa L.” as search terms to conduct searches in the literature databases such as Google Scholar, Web of Science, PubMed, China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Wanfang Data. At the same time, various related books are consulted to screen and integrate the required information. In this paper, phytochemical studies have summarized 113 compounds of turnip, including flavonoids and their glycosides, polysaccharides, glucosinolates and their breakdown products, organic acids, and other chemical constituents. Turnip has a wide range of pharmacological effects, including anti-cancer, anti-hypoxia, anti-oxidant, and hypoglycemic effects. In addition, this paper also puts forward the suggestions for the follow-up research in order to provide reference for the follow-up research.