The performance of extensively used mating designs was studied for their ability to discriminate parental line with good or poor general combining ability in a set of crosses involving nine parents of indica rice. Based on the general combining ability estimates for 16 agro-morphological characters the line X tester analysis varied with the change of tester parents. Using tester with broader genetic base line X tester analysis could indentify relatively large number of good or poor combining parents. The combining ability revealed that none of parental line were found excellent for all the characters. Among the nine lines, Pusa-1463 (L9) is a good general combiner for the characters days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height, no. of field grain panicle^-1, no. of sterile grain panicle^-1, panicle length , biological yield plant^-1, grain yield plant^-1 weight plant^-1, harvest index and test weight.