Considering that the traditional method for vigor test is complex, time- consuming, with poor reproducibility, irreversible, and likely to cause damage to the seed, a rapid and non-destructive testing method of rice seed vigor based on photoacoustic spectroscopy technology and least squares support vector regression (LSSVR) is proposed. Under the condition of temperature of 45 ℃ and relative humidity of 90%, Nanjing46 (japonica rice) and Nei5you 8015 (hybrid rice) rice seeds are artificially aged for 0, 24, 48, 72, 96 h to get rice seeds with different vigor. Spectral data of 100 samples for the two types of rice seeds are collected and divided into a calibration set (60 samples) and a prediction set (40 samples). Wavelet packet analysis is used in spectral preprocessing. Dimensionality reduction of the spectrum data is realized by covariance analysis and principal component analysis (PCA). Prediction models of rice seed vigor are established respectively by partial least squares regression (PLSR), back propagation neural network (BPNN) and LS-SVR. The results show that the optimal model is constructed by covariance analysis and LS-SVR, and the model is not only suitable for single rice species, but also for different types of rice seed in vigor forecast. The experiment shows that it is feasible that rice seed vigor is detected rapidly and non-destructively by photoacoustic spectroscopy technology and LS-SVR. The model has better prediction accuracy in vigor detection, and provides a theoretical basis for the development of portable rice seed vigor spectrometers.