diff --git a/mmseg/datasets/builder.py b/mmseg/datasets/builder.py
index f7a9926111..3ef328d0d6 100644
--- a/mmseg/datasets/builder.py
+++ b/mmseg/datasets/builder.py
@@ -4,11 +4,11 @@
 from functools import partial
 
 import numpy as np
+import torch
 from mmcv.parallel import collate
 from mmcv.runner import get_dist_info
 from mmcv.utils import Registry, build_from_cfg
-from mmcv.utils.parrots_wrapper import DataLoader, PoolDataLoader
-from torch.utils.data import DistributedSampler
+from torch.utils.data import DataLoader, DistributedSampler
 
 if platform.system() != 'Windows':
     # https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/issues/973
@@ -84,7 +84,7 @@ def build_dataloader(dataset,
                      seed=None,
                      drop_last=False,
                      pin_memory=True,
-                     dataloader_type='PoolDataLoader',
+                     persistent_workers=True,
                      **kwargs):
     """Build PyTorch DataLoader.
 
@@ -106,7 +106,11 @@ def build_dataloader(dataset,
             Default: False
         pin_memory (bool): Whether to use pin_memory in DataLoader.
             Default: True
-        dataloader_type (str): Type of dataloader. Default: 'PoolDataLoader'
+        persistent_workers (bool): If True, the data loader will not shutdown
+            the worker processes after a dataset has been consumed once.
+            This allows to maintain the workers Dataset instances alive.
+            The argument also has effect in PyTorch>=1.7.0.
+            Default: True
         kwargs: any keyword argument to be used to initialize DataLoader
 
     Returns:
@@ -128,26 +132,31 @@ def build_dataloader(dataset,
         worker_init_fn, num_workers=num_workers, rank=rank,
         seed=seed) if seed is not None else None
 
-    assert dataloader_type in (
-        'DataLoader',
-        'PoolDataLoader'), f'unsupported dataloader {dataloader_type}'
-
-    if dataloader_type == 'PoolDataLoader':
-        dataloader = PoolDataLoader
-    elif dataloader_type == 'DataLoader':
-        dataloader = DataLoader
-
-    data_loader = dataloader(
-        dataset,
-        batch_size=batch_size,
-        sampler=sampler,
-        num_workers=num_workers,
-        collate_fn=partial(collate, samples_per_gpu=samples_per_gpu),
-        pin_memory=pin_memory,
-        shuffle=shuffle,
-        worker_init_fn=init_fn,
-        drop_last=drop_last,
-        **kwargs)
+    if torch.__version__ >= '1.7.0':
+        data_loader = DataLoader(
+            dataset,
+            batch_size=batch_size,
+            sampler=sampler,
+            num_workers=num_workers,
+            collate_fn=partial(collate, samples_per_gpu=samples_per_gpu),
+            pin_memory=pin_memory,
+            shuffle=shuffle,
+            worker_init_fn=init_fn,
+            drop_last=drop_last,
+            persistent_workers=persistent_workers,
+            **kwargs)
+    else:
+        data_loader = DataLoader(
+            dataset,
+            batch_size=batch_size,
+            sampler=sampler,
+            num_workers=num_workers,
+            collate_fn=partial(collate, samples_per_gpu=samples_per_gpu),
+            pin_memory=pin_memory,
+            shuffle=shuffle,
+            worker_init_fn=init_fn,
+            drop_last=drop_last,
+            **kwargs)
 
     return data_loader