Winter cereals are acclimated during wintering, and thereafter their freezing resistance is increased. In order to analyze inheritance and heritabilities for photoinhibition of photosynthesis by high light intensity under low temperature, and to evaluate the relationship between low temperature-induced photoinhibition and winter survival, 4 parental half diallel crosses were used. The detached leaves of 7-8cm long from plants grown for 35 and 55 days were placed on wet filter paper and placed in trays at 5$^{circ}C$ cold room with 1,200 $mu$mol $m^{-2}$ $s^{-1}$ PPFD. Chlorophyll fluorescence was measured with a chlorophyll fluorescence system after dark adaptation for 30 min. The Fv/Fm of 35day old plants was reduced from 0.714 in the control leaves to 0.409 and 0.368 following photoinhibitory treatment of 6h and 8h and the CVs were increased from 0.8% to 22.2-22.3%. The Fv/Fm of 55-day old plants was reduced from 0.775 in the control leaves to 0.485 and 0.439 following photoinhibitory treatment of 10h and 12h, respectively. According to half diallel cross analysis, Reno and Dongbori 1 (highly resistant to photoinhibition) was dominant, but Oweolbori (susceptible to photoinhibition) was recessive, and photoinhibition showed partial dominance with highly additive gene action. Dongbori 1 showed the greatest GCA effects for photoinhibition, and GCA/SCA ratios (8.7-22.3 times) indicated that the additive variance for the character was more important. Winter survival in barley crosses was positively correlated with resistance to photoinhibition and significantly fitted by linear regression ($R^2$=0.751$^{**}$-0.779$^{**}$). The chlorophyll fluorescence measured by Fv/Fm has been found to be highly inheritable and very useful in evaluating relative levels of freezing resistance in barley.ley.