Abstract: The aims are to study the effect of agronomic characters on yield of maize, screen the excellent comprehensive performance maize varieties, and provide a basis for high-yield breeding. In this study, 14 maize hybrid combinations bred by our team were used as the materials, 9 agronomic characters, such as ear length, ear diameter and axial thickness, were detected. The comparison and evaluation was conducted with variability analysis, correlation analysis, path analysis and principal component analysis. The results showed that the variation coefficients of 9 agronomic characters were 2.19%-58.72%. The correlation analysis showed that the grain number per row had significantly positive correlation with the yield (r=0.450), and the bare tip length had significantly negative correlation with the yield (r=-0.336). The path analysis showed that the direct effect of ear diameter, the grain number per row and seed rate on yield was positive, and the direct effect of ear length, axial thickness, and bare tip length, the number of ear row and 1000- grain weight on yield was negative. The principal component analysis showed that the factors’contribution to yield followed the sequence as: bare tip length factor> grain number per row factor> ear row number factor > ear diameter factor. Therefore, more grain number per row, bigger ear diameter and smaller bare tip should be highlighted in breeding material screening. 1000-grains weight and characters coordination should also be focused in order to fully dig the potential germplasm resources and breed excellent maize varieties.