Abstract: For the purpose of improving germination rate of sweet corn,soaking process had been optimized using single factor experiments and response surface methodology. The optimum conditions were: soaking temperature23.9℃,soaking time of 24 h and soaking liquid ratio 1 ∶6.3. In these conditions,theoretical value of germination rate was 53.16%,which was similar to verification experiments 52.60% ± 2.07%. Thus response surface methodology was feasible for optimizing sweet corn soaking process. In order to study the effect of soaking and germinating processing on overall quality of sweet corn,10 nutritional indexes of untreated,soaked,ungerminated and germinated sweet corn were detected under the optimum soaking conditions. Principal component analysis was used to evaluate the nutritional qualities of four groups.According to the evaluation results,the order from good to bad was: germinated group,ungerminated group,soaked group and untreated group.It is considered that,soaking and germinating processing can improve the nutritional quality of sweet corn,which has practical significance for sweet corn production and processing.