Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the world’s second important cereal staple food for more than half of the population. It is rich in genetic diversity and is grown almost throughout the world. The experimental material used were four traditional land races and six improved high yielding varieties of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Six crosses of F₂ and F₃ segregating generations of the saidmaterial were studied for skewness, kurtosis and parent progeny regression analysis in seven traits including single plant yield. Estimated coefficients of skewness and kurtosis revealed the presence of genetic interactions for yield and yield attributing traits like number of productive tillers per plant, panicle length, hundred grain weight and single plant yield. Platykurtic with left skewed distribution observed for days to 50 per cent flowering, plant height, number of productive tillers per plant, panicle length, hundred grain weight and single plant yield indicated the role of dominance based complementary gene interaction, several minor genes with increasing effect involved in the expression. Hence, mild selection is effective for the improvement of the traits. The characters viz. number of productive tillers per plant, panicle length with right skewed leptokurtic distribution, indicated the presence of fewer genes with majority of them having decreasing effect and dominance based duplicate (additive × additive) type of interaction implying stringent selection are to be deployed for trait improvement. Parent progeny regression analysis paved the selection for high yielding genotypes in early generations for further crop improvement.