With the effect of global climate change on grain yield and distribution of crops, to understand how plant responds to extreme temperature stress is becoming crucial. Plants have evolved fine-tuned mechanisms in response to a wide variety of environmental stresses. During rice (Oryza sativa L.) domestication, two main genotypes are bred and extendedly cultivated in the tropical and subtropical areas in the world: indica (O. sativa ssp. indica) is sensitive to low temperature and mainly cultivated in tropical areas in higher yearly temperature; whereas japonica (O. sativa ssp. japonica) is tolerant to low temperature and mainly cultivated in subtropical areas in lower yearly temperature. The chilling sensitivity and resistance of rice cultivars are derived from ancestral Chinese wild rice during rice domestication. Previous studies have indicated that cold tolerance trait of subtropical cultivars is controlled by quantitative trait loci (QTLs) ( Miura et al., 2011). However, the molecular basis for these QTLs has not been well studied. A recent study from Kang Chong's lab at Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences (http://www.ibcas.ac.cn/) has successfully identified a rice gene named chilling-tolerance-divergence1 (COLD1) that may function as a pivotal cold sensor through modulating Ca2+ signaling to confer cold tolerance (Ma et al., 2015).