The invention discloses a promoter HLP4 induced by low temperature, high salinity, drought or ABA of arabidopsis. The nucleotide sequence of the promoter is as shown in SEQ ID No: 1, and the promoter is cloned from an arabidopsis genome by a PCR technology. The invention further discloses application of the promoter HLP4 in research of plant stress resistance genes or stress resistance gene engineering breeding. The promoter HLP4 constructs a plant expression vector of a reporter gene GUS to carry out plant transgenic operation so as to obtain a transgenic plant; and experiments prove that when the transgenic plant is treated under the conditions of low temperature, high salinity, drought and ABA, the expression activity of the reporter gene GUS is remarkably higher than the expression activity of a reporter gene GUS in a contrast group, it shows that the promoter HLP4 is a promoter which is highly induced by adverse situations, and the promoter HLP4 has huge application potential in research of stress resistance genes of plants and crop stress resistance breeding.