In order to obtain basic information for selecting early maturing rice varieties which is suitable for early cropping before Alisma plantago in the southern part of Korea. Six rice varieties were grown from May to August in 2002 at Youngjeon Experiment Field, Sunchon and yield components and yield of plants were investingated. Early maturing rice cv. Grubyeo showed higher rough rice yield than any other varieties used in the experiment. It showed high yield components, such as culm length, panicle length, number of panicles per plant, number of spikelets per panicle and ratio of ripened grains. Therefore, it was concluded that Grubyeo was the most suitable variety with high yield for the cultivation before growing of Alisma plantago at the southern part of Korea. The heritability of culm length number of spikelets per panicle and rough rice yield were high and that of panicle length number of panicle per plant, ratio of ripened grain and 1,000 grain wt. of milled rice were low. According to the result of path coefficient analysis, characters highly correlated with rough rice yield showed large direct effects on rough rice yield.