Rice occupies a pivotal place in the Indian agriculture and has been grown under diverse ecological conditions and gets exposed to different environmental stress like drought, salinity and submergence. Development of rice varieties for submergence affected areas is emphasized on the improvement of rice yield potential in specific environment. However, grain yield mostly depends on net result of yield contributing traits. While information related to the relationship between yield and its components in the breeding programme particularly for submergence is very limited. Hence, the present investigation was carried out to study the correlation and path analysis in two crosses namely ADT 43 x FR13A (Cross 1) and Improved White Ponni x FR13A (Cross 2) were evaluated under low land submerged field condition at Agricultural College and Research Institute, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India during 2015 for the study of character association between yield and yield components under submerged condition where the water depth was more than 30 cm at least for two weeks at the vegetative stage of crop. On the basis of association analysis, the traits number of tillers per plant, number of productive tillers per plant, number of filled grains per panicle, total number of grains per panicle and spikelet fertility percentage expressed significant positive association with single plant yield in cross 1. Character association of the yield and its attributing traits revealed that significant positive association of single plant yield with plant height, number of tillers, number of productive tillers, number of filled grains, total number of grains and spikelet fertility was positive and significant in cross 2. Hence, selection for these traits might improve yield. Investigation on path coefficient analysis showed that number of productive tillers and number of filled grains in cross 1 had high and positive direct effect on single plant yield, while in cross 2 number of productive tillers and total number of grains per panicle had high and positive direct effect and the traits number of filled grains per panicle and spikelet fertility had moderate direct effect on single plant yield. The study also inferred that productive tillers per plant and filled grains per panicle contributed equally through direct and indirect effects for yield improvement. Such attributes could be utilized as the selection indices for submergence tolerance in rice.

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