Sand rice (Agriophyllum squarrosum) is a potential crop in desert region of northern China. Breeding elite lines with uniform emergence and high seedling vigor is fundamental to its domestication and cultivation. This study synthesizes previous findings on germination and seedling emergence patterns according to the geographic origins of sand rice. Seeds originating from the West/extreme arid region exhibited profound dormancy, with freshly harvested seeds showing a final germination percentage (FEP) less than 10% and post-harvest treatments such as dry storage and sand burial hav-ing little effect on releasing their physiological dormancy (PD). These results imply that primary dormancy is developed during seed maturation on the mother plant of sand rice, and that a bet-hedging strategy has been evolved to adapt to the local extreme arid environment. Seeds from the Midwest/arid region displayed highly variable germination patterns, even among different collection years from the same region. For example, the Minqin (MQ) seeds from different years had FEPs ranging from 4.8% to 70%. By contrast, in the East/semi-arid region, most previous findings showed germina-tion percentages of over 85%. Collectively, these data imply that the dormancy of sand rice seeds is likely influenced by origin climate conditions and/or genetic variation. Network analysis of our previous data further revealed that long-term temperature and precipitation variables are significantly correlated with seed size and seedling emergence across seven selected lines, indicating that local adaptation is the main driver of seed development and seedling establishment strategies in natural populations of sand rice. Notably, the Aerxiang (AEX/GX-1) line exhibited synchronous seedling emergence and robust seedling vigor. Combined with its other excellent agronomic characteristics, such as large seed size, higher yield and harvest index, this line is well-suited to large-scale cultivation of sand rice in the future.