Using a squash plant, a chilling-sensitive species, and a spinach plant, a chilling-resistant one, effects of chilling temperature on the photosynthetic machinery were studied in terms of chlorophyll fluorescence. When thylakoid membranes were isolated and subjected to incubation at different temperatures, spinach showed stable photosystem II activity at the low temperature side, in contrast to squash which showed quite severe inactivation at low temperature. When parameters of chlorophyll fluorescence were examined, chilling in darkness did not affect either Fv/Fm or photochemical and non-photochemical quenching, in both types of plants. However, chilling of squash plants under irradiance of medium intensity caused a specific decrease in Fv/Fm accompanied by a decline in energy-dependent quenching. Contrastingly, photosystem li of spinach plants were not much affected by light-chilling. When the pool size of zeaxanthin was examined after exposure to high light at different temperatures, squash plants was shown to have a much lower content of antheraxanthin + zeaxanthin, as compared to spinach plants, during low-temperature photoinhibition. These results suggest that chilling-sensitive plants have low capacity to dissipate excitation energy nonradiatively, when they are exposed to low-temperature photoinhibition, and, as a consequence, more vulnerable to photoinhibitory, damage to the photosynthetic apparatus.