diff --git a/solr/CHANGES.txt b/solr/CHANGES.txt
index 4a1f5dc4e6a..bb1a27d265c 100644
--- a/solr/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/solr/CHANGES.txt
@@ -135,6 +135,10 @@ Bug Fixes
   in zookeeper as UTF-8. This bug was found after upgrading to forbidden-apis
   1.4.  (Uwe Schindler)
 
+* SOLR-4376: DataImportHandler uses wrong date format for last_index_time if
+  a delta-import is run first before any full-imports.
+  (Sebastien Lorber, Arcadius Ahouansou via shalin)
+
 Optimizations
 ----------------------
 
diff --git a/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/DIHProperties.java b/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/DIHProperties.java
index 0ea391c4974..911322eef82 100644
--- a/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/DIHProperties.java
+++ b/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/DIHProperties.java
@@ -37,6 +37,8 @@ public abstract class DIHProperties {
   
   public abstract Map<String, Object> readIndexerProperties();
   
+  public abstract String convertDateToString(Date d);
+  
   public Date getCurrentTimestamp() {
     return new Date();
   }
diff --git a/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/DocBuilder.java b/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/DocBuilder.java
index 01991de3611..d3e5230e866 100644
--- a/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/DocBuilder.java
+++ b/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/DocBuilder.java
@@ -117,6 +117,7 @@ public class DocBuilder {
   private VariableResolver getVariableResolver() {
     try {
       VariableResolver resolver = null;
+      String epoch = propWriter.convertDateToString(EPOCH);
       if(dataImporter != null && dataImporter.getCore() != null
           && dataImporter.getCore().getResourceLoader().getCoreProperties() != null){
         resolver =  new VariableResolver(dataImporter.getCore().getResourceLoader().getCoreProperties());
@@ -129,7 +130,7 @@ public class DocBuilder {
         indexerNamespace.put(LAST_INDEX_TIME, persistedProperties.get(LAST_INDEX_TIME));
       } else  {
         // set epoch
-        indexerNamespace.put(LAST_INDEX_TIME, EPOCH);
+        indexerNamespace.put(LAST_INDEX_TIME, epoch);
       }
       indexerNamespace.put(INDEX_START_TIME, dataImporter.getIndexStartTime());
       indexerNamespace.put("request", new HashMap<String,Object>(reqParams.getRawParams()));
@@ -140,7 +141,7 @@ public class DocBuilder {
         if (lastIndex != null) {
           entityNamespace.put(SolrWriter.LAST_INDEX_KEY, lastIndex);
         } else  {
-          entityNamespace.put(SolrWriter.LAST_INDEX_KEY, EPOCH);
+          entityNamespace.put(SolrWriter.LAST_INDEX_KEY, epoch);
         }
         indexerNamespace.put(entity.getName(), entityNamespace);
       }
diff --git a/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/SimplePropertiesWriter.java b/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/SimplePropertiesWriter.java
index 1d652b8d516..7967558a852 100644
--- a/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/SimplePropertiesWriter.java
+++ b/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/SimplePropertiesWriter.java
@@ -130,7 +130,8 @@ public class SimplePropertiesWriter extends DIHProperties {
     
   }
   
-  protected String convertDateToString(Date d) {
+  @Override
+  public String convertDateToString(Date d) {
     return dateFormat.format(d);
   }
   protected Date convertStringToDate(String s) {
diff --git a/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/test/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/TestSqlEntityProcessorDelta.java b/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/test/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/TestSqlEntityProcessorDelta.java
index 93928e61ff5..4fd3a61d114 100644
--- a/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/test/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/TestSqlEntityProcessorDelta.java
+++ b/solr/contrib/dataimporthandler/src/test/org/apache/solr/handler/dataimport/TestSqlEntityProcessorDelta.java
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ import org.junit.Test;
  */
 
 /**
- * Test with various combinations of parameters, child entites, transformers.
+ * Test with various combinations of parameters, child entities, transformers.
  */
 public class TestSqlEntityProcessorDelta extends AbstractSqlEntityProcessorTestCase {
   private boolean delta = false;
@@ -48,6 +48,21 @@ public class TestSqlEntityProcessorDelta extends AbstractSqlEntityProcessorTestC
     singleEntity(c);
     validateChanges();
   }
+  
+  @Test
+  public void testDeltaImportWithoutInitialFullImport() throws Exception {
+    log.debug("testDeltaImportWithoutInitialFullImport delta-import...");
+    countryEntity = false;
+    delta = true;
+    /*
+     * We need to add 2 in total: 
+     * +1 for deltaQuery i.e identifying id of items to update, 
+     * +1 for deletedPkQuery i.e delete query
+     */
+    singleEntity(totalPeople() + 2);
+    validateChanges();
+  }
+
   @Test
   public void testWithSimpleTransformer() throws Exception {
     log.debug("testWithSimpleTransformer full-import...");