Plenty of variations in nutritional, morphological and agronomic traits occur in the pigmented rice germplasm. The current study was conducted to evaluate the growth characteristics of 71 pigmented rice genotypes having different origin taking one Korean landrace (Heugjinjubyeo) as control. Amongst the twenty eight growth characters studied; leaf length, leaf width, ligule length, panicle length and panicles per hill showed a higher degree of variance. The heading dates of the pigmented rice germ plasm were distributed from Aug. 1 to Sep. 28. Thirty five cultivars that headed or flowered in August were found adaptable for cultivation in Korea. The mean culm length and panicle length were significantly higher than Heugjinjubyeo but most of cultivars having strong or middle of culm strength made it possible to produce the stable yield. Some cultivars showed unique qualitative characters such as openness of culm angle, purple ligule, auricle, awn and glume colors, poor panicle exsertion and long empty glume. Nine cultivars including Heugjinjubyeo showed purple seed coat color while those of the others (62 cultivars) were of red seed coat.

Significant variations occur in pigmented rice germplasm with respect to their antioxidant potential. Therefore this study was designed to evaluate the antioxidant potential of exotic rice germplasm collected from different parts of the globe. Grain samples of exotic rice germ plasm (21 0 accessions) were collected from different countries of Asia, America and Europe and their ground grain samples were extracted with 80% methanol at 30 oc using sonicater for 30 minutes to estimate their total polyphenol and flavonoids contents and antioxidant activity. Rice germplasm had tremendous variations with respect to total polyphenols (0.0800.71 mg g- 1) and falvonoid contents (0.091 00.413 mg g" 1 ) and antioxidant activity (18096%). Rice cultivars with red and black seed coat had higher antioxidant activity owing to significantly higher polyphenols and falvonoid contents in their grains. Therefore rice cultivars with red and black seed coat color should be included in breeding rice genotypes with higher nutritional value.