In rice, lipids in seed are stored as TAG in the oil bodies and are mainly present in embryos and aleurone layers [8]. Most of the mineral nutrients were transferred into seed through seed coat,and were further delivered from endosperm to embryo [36]. It was reported that decreased lipid content accompanied abnormal embryo development in canola rape [37]. In Arabidopsis, the total lipid content of the kas I seeds was decreased to 33.6% of the WT which led to defective embryo development [38]. Similar to the results in rape and Arabidopsis, our histological and cytological analysis showed that the embryo development was delayed and irregular morphology of embryo was observed in OsLTPL36-RNAi lines (Fig. 5), indicating reduced lipid caused defective embryo development in rice. Moreover, our result showed that the C16:0,C18:0, C18:1 and C18:2 FAs were significantly reduced after down regulation of OsLTPL36 (Table 2). It was reported that 16:0 and 18:0 FAs are involved in multiple biological processes, including production of glycerol lipids and phospholipids that are important in cell signaling for embryo development [36]. Thus, it is possible that OsLTPL36 might transfer lipid molecules for embryo development cell signaling although further studies are needed to dissect the molecular mechanism.