Abstract: To investigate the changes of maize metabolites during seed germination, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry（GC-MS） combined with partial least squares discriminant analysis（PLS-DA） were used to analyze the metabolic changes and differential metabolites of maize seeds at the stages of imbibition（8 h）,bud（36 h）,germination（80 h） and seedling formation（108 h） in this study, and the distribution of differential metabolites and the mechanism of regulating metabolic pathways in maize seeds during germination were also discussed.The results showed that the differential metabolites were mainly organic acids, amino acids and sugars, and the differences in these metabolites were mainly reflected through metabolic pathways of glycine, serine and threonine（p＜0.05）.During germinating stage, the content of saccharides increased significantly, which was the main energy source, while the content of organic acids reached the highest level during the germination stage and degradation of fat was degraded as the main energy source.Additionally, the content of amino acids reduced the lowest level during germination stage and increased the highest level during seedling stage.