Desertification remains a major environmental problem in our country. Biocrusts(BSCs) can effectively fix sand, but the natural crusts have a long formation cycle. Therefore, artificial biocrusts technology came into being. The artificial biocrust is a new method and model of desertification land treatment. Spreading natural BSCs fragments is one of the effective methods to cultivate artificial BSCs, and this method has a short incubation cycle, is simple to operate, and has low economic costs. Rainfall significantly affects the colonization and development of artificial BSCs. Most of the existing studies have focused on the influence of total and frequency of rainfall on the water exposure of the single type of artificial BSCs. How the single rainfall affects the growth and development of different types of artificial BSCs is still rarely reported. In this study, natural moss crust (N-M), natural cyanobacteria-lichen crust (N-CL), natural cyanobacteria crust (N-C) and artificial cyanobacteria crust (A-C) fragments from the southeast margin of the Tengger Desert were used as materials for cultivating artificial BSCs. The effects of single rainfall treatments of 1 mm, 2 mm and 5 mm and different types of BSCs fragments on artificial BSCs were investigated. The results showed that artificial BSCs could be successfully cultured using 3 natural BSCs fragments and A-C crust fragments under three single rainfall treatment, and the development effect of artificial BSCs was the best under the 2mm single rainfall treatment, while N-C and A-C had higher coverage (32.5%) and chlorophyll a content (11.39 μg/cm²) in the early stage of culture than other types. Regression analysis showed that the coverage of artificial BSCs was related to the single rainfall treatments. The thicknesses of N-M and N-CL were binomial related to the single rainfall treatments, and N-C and A-C were logarithmic related to the single rainfall treatments. The chlorophyll a content of N-C was linearly positively correlated with the single rainfall treatments. The loosely bound extracellular polysaccharide content of N-M was linearly negatively correlated with single rainfall treatments. The tightly bound exopolysaccharide content and the single rainfall treatments of N-M and A-C showed linearly negative correlation and exponential correlation, respectively (P<0.05). In this study, it was proved that the single rainfall treatments and BSCs types significantly affected the colonization and development of artificial BSCs, and A-C were more stable than N-C. So it is suggested that when using artificial BSCs for large-scale ecological restoration, appropriate BSCs should be selected and artificial BSCs fragments should be preferred as culture materials.