From the viewpoint of eco-environmental quality, the progress in research on the translocation, transformation and cycle of nutrients in agroecosystems is reviewed. So do the effect of governmental policy and farmer behavior.  The cycle of nutrients (C, N, P, S) and its environmental effect has received more attention, and the relative networks at national scale have been set up monitoring and study the above processes. One hot point in recent research is building nonpoint models and integrating them into GIS to quantitate the nutrients loss, and at the same time take into account the effects of change in policy, institution and farmer production. The problems facing to the sustainable development of agriculture in China include mainly arable land reduction, soil quality degradation, and expanded non-point pollution caused by huge input of chemical fertilizer. The domestic research of nutrient cycling in agroecosystems needs strengthening in the field of eco-environmental effect. The problems should be paid attention to, in the near future, the quantity of translocation flux of nutrients and its estimation methods, the models for calculating the loss of nutrients and the relative parameters, especially the effect of governmental policy and farmer behavior on the production, utilization and management. At the end, the policy and optimized management measures were given in this paper. According to the advances in research and the national demand to solve the problems in agriculture and environment, a project was launched by Chinese Academy of Sciences to study the translocation and transformation of nutrients in the key agroecosystems and its optimized management, which is conducted relying on Chinese Ecological Research Network (CERN). 