Eight traditional rice varieties viz., bora, prosad bhog, kola joha, helash bora, salihoi bao, kola amona, ronga bora and sok-bonglong along with ‘sahbhagi dhan’ (drought tolerant) and ‘IR64’ (drought sensitive) were studied invitro under two different drought stress conditions. Different parameters studied were germination percentage, shoot length and root length. Drought stress was produced by ½ Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium augmented with two treatments of polyethylene glycol (PEG), with control such as 0, 15 and 20% of polyethylene glycol-6000PEG. Highest relative germination (87.00%) was found in salihoi bao variety under low drought stress conditions created by 15% PEG. Lowest relative germination percentage was obtained in the variety helash bora (57.32%). The variety ronga bora (88.00%) was found to be the best at 15% PEG for shoot length and in case of root length, salihoi bao (89.15%) had highest root length. Helash bora had lowest shoot as well as root length in stressed condition. Sahbhagi dhan showed relatively good result almost in all the parameters under drought stress because of its own nature of tolerance.

Keywords: Drought tolerance, traditional rice, morphological parameters, water stress.