The photochemical reflectance index (PRI) calculated from spectral reflectance has universally become a proxy for the light-use efficiency (LUE), which significantly improves the LUE-based estimation of ecosystem gross primary productivity on a large scale through upscaling. In this study, we observed the vegetation spectral reflectance of a planted subtropical coniferous forest from the top of a flux tower at Qianyanzhou Station, one of the ChinaFLUX sites, in September and December 2013, and simultaneously measured CO2 flux and meteorological variables for correlation and regression analysis. Results showed that PRI had a better correlation with LUE (R2 = 0.20, P< 0.001) than that of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), i.e., PRI was preferred in LUE retrieval. During the whole observation period, PRI and soil water content (SWC)-based bivariate regression model correlated well with LUE (R2 = 0.29, P < 0.001 and R2 = 0.30, P < 0.01 for daytime and midday observation, respectively), but in autumn the bivariate regression model of PRI and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) had a higher correlation with LUE (R2 = 0.448, P < 0.001) for midday observation, which showed that environmental factors, i.e., SWC and VPD, had a potential in improving the LUE retrieval from PRI, but the choice of appropriate environmental factors depended on season.