During the dredging and loading process of a trailing suction hopper dredger，the slurry blocks the pipeline when its transportation flow rate is too low，which not only affects dredging efficiency but also causes safety hazards. In response，this paper focuses on the model predictive control of slurry pipeline transportation. It proposes a predictive control method based on the radial basis function-autoregressive exogenous（RBF-ARX）model，and this method controls the flow rate of the slurry in the pipeline of a trailing suction hopper dredger by changing the speed of the slurry pump. It then builds a model of slurry pipeline transportation based on the RBF-ARX model and designs a predictive controller based on the RBF-ARX model to simulate the slurry transportation process. The results show that compared with the proportional-integral-derivative（PID）controller，the proposed model predictive controller has a better dynamic control effect and higher robustness.