Abstract. To identify the key soil parameters influencing N2O emission from the wheat-growing season, an outdoor pot experiment with a total of 18 fertilized Chinese soils planted with wheat was conducted in Nanjing, China during the 2000/2001 wheat-growing season. Average seasonal N2O-N emission for all 18 soils was 610mg m2, ranging from 193 to 1,204mg m2, approximately a 6.2-fold difference between the maximum and the minimum. Correlation analysis indicated that the seasonal N2O emission was negatively correlated with soil organic C (r2=0.5567, P0.001), soil total N (r2=0.4684, P0.01) and the C:N ratio (r2=0.4530, P0.01), respectively. A positive dependence of N2O emission on the soil pH (r2=0.3525, P0.01) was also observed. No clear relationships existed between N2O emission and soil texture, soil trace elements of Fe, Cu and Mg, and above-ground biomass of the wheat crop at harvest. A further investigation suggested that the seasonal N2O-N emission (E, mg m2) can be quantitatively explained by E=100534.2SOC+4.1Sa (R2=0.7703, n=18, P=0.0000). SOC and Sa represent the soil organic C (g kg1) and available S (mg kg1), respectively.