The two giant panda cubs that left here Thursday for a 10-year stay in the United States are most likely to produce offspring there, a giant panda breeding expert said.

"The two giant pandas, one male and one female, are an ideal couple, and they will most probably have cubs after they reach their maturity in two or three years," said Professor Li Guanghan, director of the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center.

He said the fact that both giant pandas are very healthy also added to the likelihood of parenthood.

The pandas, Jiu Jiu and Hua Hua, are on a ten-year loan to the Atlanta Zoo in the U.S. state of Georgia as part of an international research program.

Two years ago, Chinese and American scientists used DNA analysis testing to determine that Hua Hua and Jiu Jiu are from different families, aiming to avoid inbreeding.

According to Li, the average life span of a giant panda is about 25 years, and it reaches maturity at about age 4 or 5.

"The couple will live in the States for ten years -- there is every reason to believe they will have cubs there," Li added.

As part of the research, the breeding base also sent two specialists to Atlanta along with the pandas to conduct panda breeding research studies with their American colleagues.

The giant panda is one of the world's most endangered animal species. It has a very low reproductive capability. A female giant panda becomes pregnant once a year and has one or two cubs at each birth.

China has experimented with many ways to increase the panda population and succeeded in breeding the first giant panda by artificial insemination in 1963. Since then, 12 zoos and one animal reserve in the world have bred about 140 giant pandas, but the survival rate has been a low 29 percent.

As China's only professional giant panda research institute, Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center has used artificial insemination to produce 34 giant pandas, who then gave birth to 50 cubs, but only a little over 30 survived.

There are now about 1,000 giant pandas in existence, 80 percent of them in China's Sichuan Province. Those living in captivity total over 120, with five in the United States.