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Abstract. Oilseed rape is one of the leading sources of vegetable oil in the world. Maximizing the seed yield and quality is crucial to improve the profit for farmers and meet the increased consumer demands for healthy vegetable oil. However, current evaluation process of seed yield and quality, which is dependent on analyzing a small sample size of harvested seeds by wet chemistry methods and/or manual measurements, is tedious and inefficient. As the photosynthesis of pods plays an important role in the accumulation of grain filling, this research was aimed to evaluate the seed yield and quality of oilseed rape by using chlorophyll fluorescence parameters. The chlorophyll fluorescence induction kinetics (OJIP) of rape pods were acquired in two independent experiments with different levels of nitrogen (N) applications and crop varieties, respectively. The JIP-test showed that the application of N fertilizer greatly influenced the plant photosynthetic capacity and crop productivity, and the photosynthetic response was also varied in different varieties. It was found that commonly used parameters including maximum PSII quantum yield Fv/Fm (ie. φ_Po) and the performance index PI_ABS were responsive to N excess. The parameters of φ_Eo, ψo and Fv/Fm in varieties named GY605, ZS758 also showed significant differences from those in ZD612 and ZD630. Various degrees of correlation were obtained between fluorescence parameters from JIP-test and seed yield and quality. Several fluorescence parameters selected by the random forests (RF) algorithm showed high correlations with seed yield and quality. These results demonstrated the potential of chlorophyll fluorescence method for assessing the seed yield and quality of oilseed rape at the early podding stage, which could be also useful for advancing crop breeding and improving agronomic management.