The poor edible quality of whole wheat steamed bread has been the primary limiting factor for their wider application. Existing studies have shown that traditional starter culture can improve the edible quality of white steamed bread， but there are few studies on the effect of traditional starter culture on the edible quality of whole wheat steamed bread. In this paper， 21 traditional starter culture from different regions were selected to investigate their effects on the edible quality of whole wheat steamed bread in terms of color， textural characteristics， specific volume and sensory evaluation， using commercial yeast whole wheat steamed bread as a control. The traditional starter culture suitable for the improvement of edible quality of whole wheat steamed bread were preferentially selected by principal component analysis. The results showed that all the 15 fermentation preparations improved the edible quality of whole wheat steamed bread compared with the common whole wheat steamed bread. Among them， the hardness of whole wheat steamed bread decreased by 5.03%-40.76%， the specific volume could be improved by 0.66%-41.72%， and the overall sensory evaluation score improved by 0.29%-9.08% in the textural characteristics. Among the principal component analysis， the indices that mainly showed positive correlation with the top three principal component factors were cohesiveness， reversibility， chewiness and elasticity and color and specific volume of whole wheat steamed bread， and the top three ranked in order of comprehensive edible quality were the traditional fermented preparation whole wheat steamed bread numbered 15， 6 and 18. The results of this study provide data support for the improvement of edible quality of whole wheat steamed bread by traditional starter culture and help to promote the application of whole wheat steamed bread.