Abstract: The paper aims to clarify the situation of nutritional and sowing quality of Chinese major cotton cultivars, reveal current status of cotton breeding in China, and guide rational use of cotton by-products and specific target breeding. The characters of seed nutritional quality (protein, oil content), sowing quality (germination rate) and three physical characters (seed index, kernel index and kernel index/seed index ) of 142 major cultivars from three main cotton regions were determined and analyzed. The results showed that the seed nutritional quality of current major cultivars was very close. The oil content and protein content were separately concentrated in the ranges of 27.1%-33.0% and 41.0%-45.0%; the cotton cultivars with high oil content and high protein content were few; the variation of protein content and oil content was slight and they showed significantly and negatively correlation. The average value of four necessary- inspection items (moisture content, purity, percentage germination and varietal purity) was 9.6% , 100.0% , 87.8% and 97.1% , respectively. The qualified rate of moisture content and purity reached 100% in supervision and random checking for three consecutive years, the unqualified items were mainly in varietal purity and germination percentage. The results truly reflected the current situation of nutritional and sowing quality of cotton seeds, therefore, it was very necessary to carry out the multi-target breeding of cotton, but it was still a tough task to simultaneously improve the seed oil content and protein content.