In recent years， the global low temperature extreme weather occurs frequently， destabilizing the rice production. Low temperature is a factor that restricts the expansion of rice planting areas. Therefore， the identification and cloning of genes related to low-temperature and the elucidation of their molecular mechanism might lay a theoretical foundation in low-temperature molecular breeding of rice. In this study， a mutant lta1 （low temperature albinism 1） showing low temperature leaf albinism was identified from the chemically-induced mutagenesis mutant library of rice Nipponbare. Compared with the wild type， the lta1 mutant displayed albino leaves with significantly reduced chlorophyll content， and abnormal chloroplast structure development at 20 ℃， whereas there was no significant difference between lta1 and wild type at 30 ℃. Through map-based cloning， the mutant gene lta1 was allocated between the insertion/deletion markers LTA1-3 and LTA1-7 on the short arm of chromosome 3， with a physical distance of 132 kb. Based on the rice gene expression database， 17 candidate genes in the region were annotated， and the proteins of six candidate genes were proposed to be localized in chloroplasts. Real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR showed that most chloroplast encoding genes were observed with lower transcripts in the mutant， while most chlorophyll synthesis related genes did not change significantly. Our results provide a possibility for further cloning the LTA1 gene and revealing the mechanism of chloroplast development in rice under low temperature.