The Xishuangbanna tropical rainforest in Yunnan Province is the greatest biodiversity hotspot in China. However, the biodiversity of this region is under threat, making seed conservation through seed and/or germplasm banking particularly urgent and crucial. Seed desiccation sensitivity limits the possibility of seed banking of 47% of tropical rainforest species. Thus, knowing if a species has desiccation-sensitive seeds is an important first step in seed banking; however, often resources are limited, making it difficult to determine storage behaviour for all the species in a region. Prediction of seed sensitivity using the SCR–SM model based on seed-coat ratio (SCR) and seed dry mass (SM) might be an alternative for determining desiccation sensitivity of seeds of each species. Here, seed-desiccation sensitivity of 101 woody species from the Xishuangbanna tropical forest were analysed using this model, and physiological determinations were made for a total of 25 species. Seed storage behaviour for 59 species was used for model validation, and storage behavior of 88% of these species was successfully predicted. Seed storage behaviour of 83% of the 59 species was successfully predicted using the 1000-seed weigth–moisture content (TSW–MC) criteria, which include seeds with 1000-seed weight >500 g and seed moisture content at shedding of 30 –70%. The two predictive methods were subsequently used to predict seed desiccation sensitivity for another 42 species from Xishuangbanna whose storage behaviour was uncertain. Our results indicated that ~50% of the species in Xishuangbanna are likely to have desiccation-sensitive seeds.