An ensemble classifier approach for microRNA precursor (pre-miRNA) classification was proposed based upon combining a set of heterogeneous algorithms including support vector machine (SVM), k-nearest neighbors (kNN) and random forest (RF), then aggregating their prediction through a voting system. Additionally, the proposed algorithm, the classification performance was also improved using discriminative features, self-containment and its derivatives, which have shown unique structural robustness characteristics of pre-miRNAs.