The application of water-saving irrigation in rice field is of great significance to improving water and fertilizer use efficiencies, alleviating non-point source pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, thus maintaining the biodiversity and the security of national food supply. Recently, the environmental and ecological effects of rice water-saving irrigation become more and more eminent, drawing more attention. This paper expounds the application status of rice water-saving irrigation modes, analyzes the characteristics of the main rice water-saving irrigation modes and their effects of water saving, cost efficiency and environmental and ecological benefits. In addition, we also point out some drawbacks on the aspects of comprehensive efficiency of rice water-saving irrigation, comprehensive influencing mechanism of water-saving irrigation on greenhouse gas emissions, regulation mechanisms of water-saving irrigation on weed and arthropod diversity and multi-criteria evaluation of rice water-saving irrigation modes. Besides, we put forward some future study topics, including mutual benefit mechanism between water-saving irrigation and water saving, yield growth, environment and ecology, as well as the synergistic and microbe-driven mechanisms of greenhouse gas emissions under water-saving irrigation, the complete and regulation mechanisms of weed community in paddy fields and the optimization of rice water-saving irrigation modes by constructing the comprehensive evaluation index system.