diff --git a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostClassifier.scala b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostClassifier.scala
index dfcedd3ed..c2e53e9a4 100644
--- a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostClassifier.scala
+++ b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostClassifier.scala
@@ -82,9 +82,6 @@ class XGBoostClassifier (
 
   def setSeed(value: Long): this.type = set(seed, value)
 
-  // setters for booster params
-  def setBooster(value: String): this.type = set(booster, value)
-
   def setEta(value: Double): this.type = set(eta, value)
 
   def setGamma(value: Double): this.type = set(gamma, value)
diff --git a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostRegressor.scala b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostRegressor.scala
index dcc6e534a..93c4b7446 100644
--- a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostRegressor.scala
+++ b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostRegressor.scala
@@ -84,9 +84,6 @@ class XGBoostRegressor (
 
   def setSeed(value: Long): this.type = set(seed, value)
 
-  // setters for booster params
-  def setBooster(value: String): this.type = set(booster, value)
-
   def setEta(value: Double): this.type = set(eta, value)
 
   def setGamma(value: Double): this.type = set(gamma, value)
diff --git a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/params/BoosterParams.scala b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/params/BoosterParams.scala
index 0bc54fd6f..c3be3601b 100644
--- a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/params/BoosterParams.scala
+++ b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/params/BoosterParams.scala
@@ -22,15 +22,6 @@ import org.apache.spark.ml.param.{DoubleParam, IntParam, Param, Params}
 
 private[spark] trait BoosterParams extends Params {
 
-  /**
-   * Booster to use, options: {'gbtree', 'gblinear', 'dart'}
-   */
-  final val booster = new Param[String](this, "booster",
-    s"Booster to use, options: {'gbtree', 'gblinear', 'dart'}",
-    (value: String) => BoosterParams.supportedBoosters.contains(value.toLowerCase))
-
-  final def getBooster: String = $(booster)
-
   /**
    * step size shrinkage used in update to prevents overfitting. After each boosting step, we
    * can directly get the weights of new features and eta actually shrinks the feature weights
@@ -246,7 +237,7 @@ private[spark] trait BoosterParams extends Params {
 
   final def getLambdaBias: Double = $(lambdaBias)
 
-  setDefault(booster -> "gbtree", eta -> 0.3, gamma -> 0, maxDepth -> 6,
+  setDefault(eta -> 0.3, gamma -> 0, maxDepth -> 6,
     minChildWeight -> 1, maxDeltaStep -> 0,
     growPolicy -> "depthwise", maxBins -> 16,
     subsample -> 1, colsampleBytree -> 1, colsampleBylevel -> 1,
diff --git a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/params/GeneralParams.scala b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/params/GeneralParams.scala
index 4dc9e7a39..6a27195b8 100644
--- a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/params/GeneralParams.scala
+++ b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/params/GeneralParams.scala
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ package ml.dmlc.xgboost4j.scala.spark.params
 
 import com.google.common.base.CaseFormat
 import ml.dmlc.xgboost4j.scala.spark.TrackerConf
+
 import org.apache.spark.ml.param._
 import scala.collection.mutable
 
@@ -198,6 +199,12 @@ private[spark] trait ParamMapFuncs extends Params {
 
   def XGBoostToMLlibParams(xgboostParams: Map[String, Any]): Unit = {
     for ((paramName, paramValue) <- xgboostParams) {
+      if ((paramName == "booster" && paramValue != "gbtree") ||
+        (paramName == "updater" && paramValue != "grow_colmaker,prune")) {
+        throw new IllegalArgumentException(s"you specified $paramName as $paramValue," +
+          s" XGBoost-Spark only supports gbtree as booster type" +
+          " and grow_colmaker,prune as the updater type")
+      }
       val name = CaseFormat.LOWER_UNDERSCORE.to(CaseFormat.LOWER_CAMEL, paramName)
       params.find(_.name == name) match {
         case None =>