Abstract: Acoustic emission signal will be released when plants are under disease stress. By collecting the acoustic emission signals of the plants and with the statistically optimal cylindrical near-field acoustic holography (SOCNAH) technique as the theoretical basis, the recognition to the acoustic emission signals of plants and the sound field analysis are conducted. Simulative analyses for single sound source and multiple sound sources are respectively made. Through constantly modifying several parameters such as the radii of the holographic cylinder (r_H) and reconstructed cylinder (r_S) and the spaces between measuring points, the ranges of parameters for the best reconstruction results are obtained, and meantime, the effect of window function on reconstruction is discussed. The algorithm based on SOCNAH is compared with the algorithm based on the spatial Fourier transform cylindrical near-field acoustic holography, and the simulation results show that for single sound source and multiple sound sources, the relative errors of the reconstructed surface sound pressure amplitudes are respectively below -10dB and about -2dB for the spatial Fourier transform cylindrical near-field acoustic holography, but for SOCNAH the relative errors respectively are below -15 dB and about -26 dB respectively, which fully indicates the superiority of SOCNAH.