Four hundred thirty one traditional rice cultivars from germplasm collection of Rice Research Station, Chinsurah offered a valuable genepool for the utilization in the breeding program to improve yield, it’s components and grain size and shape. Characterization had been done on thirty one traits. Among the qualitative traits, considerable variability was recorded for basal leaf sheath colour, awning and auricle colour. Characters like leaf blade colour, panicle exsertion, stigma colour etc. showed moderate variability. Maximum variability was observed for grains panicle^–1 followed by spikelets panicle^–1.