Abstract：Rice (Oryza sativa) is a staple food crop for more than half of the world population. Photoperiod-thermo-sensitive genic male sterility (PGMS) is widely used in two-line hybrid breeding. Recently, a great progress has been made in rice PGMS. A number of sterile genes of PGMS were mapped on rice chromosomes, and 3 of them pms 3, p/tms12-1 and tms 5 were cloned. At the present review, we summarized the advancements on mechanism of fertility transformation, related-gene mapping and cloning, mechanism of fertility transformation, and molecular regulation in PGMS, and furtherly discussed the epigenetic role in the study of PGMS. These findings in this review had significant implications in further studies.
