Six identical japonica rice varieties from two sources were cultivated in the field. One set was from seeds stored in the National Long-term Genebank and was used as the control, and the other was from the seeds having higher regeneration cycles and being used in the production all along. Differences between the two sources on seedling emergence rate, growth duration, agronomic traits and grain quality were studied. Deterioration in chalky quality was observed for rice of higher regeneration cycles on five of the six varieties, whereas no significant differences were shown for other quality traits. On the other hand, the number of filled grains per panicle was lower for those from the genebank, indicating that long time storage in low temperature might result in a decline of grain number. In addition, emergence rate of stored seeds was also relatively lower than that of higher regeneration cycles.