Strong seedlings are essential for high yield.  To explore the foundation of strong seedlings, we investigated various factors influencing the conversion and distribution of seed storage reserves during seedling establishment in maize inbred lines.  Three maize inbred lines were used to explore the effects of seed size, seed vigor, illumination duration, temperature, water content, and salt concentration of the seedling medium on the utilization of seed storage reserves during seedling establishment.  The results showed that the conversion rate of small seeds was 3.69 to 17.71% higher than that of large seeds.  Moreover, prolonged illumination time was conducive to the formation of strong seedlings.  However, low temperature, drought stress and salt stress reduced the conversion rate of seed storage reserves and increased the root/shoot ratio.  These results could be used to guide field management during seedling emergence and develop improved germplasm with a high conversion rate of seed storage reserves.

To explore the relation of maize grain texture and phenotypic traits with grain thin-layer drying rate, we observed the ultra- structure of maize grain, and tested three traits about the maize grain texture and four phenotypic traits. The vitreous part percentage was different (P<0.05) among different maize inbred lines. There was a significant relationship between the drying rate with grain texture and phenotypic traits. Main factors that influenced the drying rate were different during different drying stages. New results observed that empirical constants (k and N) in drying equation were different for seed of the 30 inbred lines of maize. The k of simplified diffusion equation and N of page equation were significantly influenced by both grain texture and phenotypic traits. These results could be used as guideline parameters for drying maize seeds having different grain characteristics during different drying stages.