The consequences of the current climate changes sustain the strategy of early sowing (early spring) to avoid drought during the flowering period and thus secure maize yields. Earlier sowing dates increase the risk of exposure of the plants to cold during the early development stages and thus re-evaluation of elite material is required to select more tolerant genotypes. The first step of re-evaluation is to define characteristics that could be used for fast survey of the elite material, before performing more profound analyses. The aim of this paper was to analyse morphological characteristics (radicle length, coleoptile length, seedling weight) of 5 day old seedlings of two inbred lines LK and Mo17 (according to breeders experience tolerant and susceptible, respectively) subjected to chilling stress (10°C day/8°C night) for 24h and 48h, as well as to perform morphological (root and shoot characteristics) and physiological (chlorophyl, flavonoid and anthocyanin contents) analyses of the plants after seven day recovery. Control plants were grown under optimal conditions (30°C day /20°C night, ≈60% humidity), at an 8h photoperiod. The results were not straightforward, as the susceptible Mo17 showed faster recovery (statistically insignificant differences between control and treatment plants for most of the analysed traits), while the tolerant LK was a more robust genotype throughout the experiment. Chlorophyl, flavonoid and anthocyanin contents were not informative. The results identified survival rate and root characteristics as informative for fast screening of seedlings for determination of cold tolerance.