Twenty-three giant panda cubs have made their first public appearance after being born at the Chengdu Research Base in China.

The cubs, aged from one to four months, were placed on a green mat in front of dozens of spectators at the zoo on Thursday.

Among the pandas were 10 pairs of twins.

The number of newborn pandas at the base have almost doubled from this time last year, with experts attributing the increase in population due to improvement in breeding technology.

Wu Kongju, the animal management director at the base, said: "We used to mate the pandas by observing their behaviors to decide the timing for mating. But now we combine behavior observation with endocrine analysis to get more accurate timing, thus ensuring a fairly high breeding rate."

Since its launch 30 years ago, the base has bred 176 giant pandas.