Abstract: Searching new materials for biotic and abiotic stress tolerance from diverse sources such as traditional rice gene pool is important as there is limited variability for the traits in the improved rice cultivars. Identification and introgression of favorable alleles into elite breeding lines from traditional rice cultivars to increase the biotic and abiotic stress tolerances in cultivated rice are still progressing. This will prevent genetic erosion of cultivated varieties in Sri Lanka hence many improved rice cultivars are derived from few parental lines. Identification of rice cultivars with multiple tolerances are very much needed to utilize in the regions where micro climate of the crop is changing time to time due to short term flooding in prolonged rainy seasons, unexpected drought seasons comes with delayed monsoon rain or increasing salinity in coastal belt with intrusion of tidal waves.