A population of 284 recombinant inbred lines (RIL) from the indica-japonica rice cross Lemont ?Teqing was used to analyze the main effects, epistatic effects of the QTLs, and QTL by environment interactions(QEs) controlling heading date(HD). Three QTLs with additive effects for HD were mapped in the chromosome 3, 7 and 11，which accounted for 18.86% of the phenotypic variation, the percentage of phenotypic variation explained by individual additive QTLs ranged from 2.95% to 10.56%. QTL ?environment interaction was detected on qHD7-1, which explains the phenotypic variation of HD with 2.18%. Epistasis analysis indicated that nine pairs of epistasis were detected for heading date. The results indicated that some QTLs were environmentally sensitive and epistasis was important genetic basis for heading date. The information obtained in this study should be very useful for manipulating the QTLs for heading date by molecular MAS.