A no-pollen male sterile mutant tip2-zh was isolated from the EMS-soaked?progeny?of Zhonghui 8015 in this study. No significant difference in agronomic traits such as plant height, tiller number, tiller angle and heading date was observed between the tip2-zh mutant and the wild type, whereas tip2-zh mutant showed thinner, slender and translucent anthers as well as no mature pollen grains in the anther locule. The semi-thin sections of anthers during different development stages showed that the tip2-zh exhibited abnormal meiosis vacuolated tapetum with delayed degradation, the meiocyte mother cell could not generate microspore cells and finally resulting in failure of pollen grains formation. SEM observation also found that the linear substances of the outer surface in the mutant anther such as wax and cutin were more concentrated, the inner wall of the mutant anther exhibits irregular stratified and the microspores were finally broken and degraded. Genetic analysis showed that the mutation of tip2-zh was controlled by a recessive single gene in a 27 kb interval flanked by JX21 and JX26 on chromosome 1. Sequencing analysis revealed a C-to-T substitution in the first exon of the bHLH transcription factor TIP2/bHLH142 (LOC_Os01g18870), which resulted in a stop codon and encoded for an early-maturity protein, thus causing the male sterility. The transcriptional analysis using qPCR suggested that the expression levels on a series of GMS genes were changed significantly in the tip2-zh mutant. Collectively, these results proved that the gene TIP2-ZH played an important role in many biological processes during rice anther development such as the lipid synthesis of anthers, tapetum degradation and pollen wall formation.