This research was conducted at the Agriculture Departament of the College of Agriculture ?Luiz de Queiroz?, University of São Paulo, Brazil, to compare the germination of soybean seeds submmited to different water imbibition methods, Seeds of IAC-15 soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merril) cultivar, showing three levels of physiological quality, were used. The seed physiological quality was determined by germination, accelerated aging, electrical conductivity and moisture content tests. The efficiency of these procedures was established through the results of germination test after different water imbibition methods compared with initial physiological quality. This results showed that the water imbibition methods affected the results of seed germination test, but the best were obtained with moist atmosphere method at temperature of 20°C.