Abstract: To provide the basis of quality improvement for maize breeding, the differences and correlations of the kernel quality characters in 211 maize inbred lines with different resources were studied. The content of crude protein, crude fat, crude starch and lysine was measured by near-infrared spectrum analyzer, and compared the coefficient of variation in different group based on hierarchical cluster analysis. The results showed that there were significant differences between different inbreds, years, locations, years ×inbreds, inbreds × years × locations. The content of crude protein, crude fat and lysine among different inbred lines was also different, the coefficient of variation for lysine content was the highest (22.77%), and the variation coefficient for crude starch content was the lowest (1.89%). Correlation analysis showed that there was a significantly positive correlation between crude fat and crude protein, lysine and crude protein, and lysine and crude fat. However, crude starch and crude protein, crude fat, lysine was negatively correlated. The results of clustering analysis showed that 211 maize inbred lines were divided into 9 groups: G1~G9, for which G1~G5 contained 205 inbred lines (accounting for 97.16%), and there was a great number of inbred lines with excellent quality traits in groups G1, G2, G4 and G5. Compared with the 4 parental inbred lines from two major hybrids, ‘Zhengdan 958’ and ‘Xianyu 335’, 32 maize elite inbred lines for grain quality were selected. These results could provide a reference for the improvement of the quality traits for inbred lines in maize breeding.