the major constraints in hybrid rice breeding are availability of limited number of parental lines with specific desirable traits and lower frequency of restorers among elite breeding lines. The popular, high-yielding mega-rice variety Swarna, has been identified to be a partial restorer (as it has only one of major fertility restorer genes, Rf4) and hence cannot be utilized directly in the hybrid rice breeding. To convert the partial restorer to complete restorer, a cross was made between Swarna and a stable restorer KMR3R possessing Rf3 and Rf4 genes and developed BC 1 f 5 and Bc 2 f 4 populations by markerassisted back cross breeding (MABB). The SSR marker DRRM-RF3-10 linked to Rf3 gene located on chromosome 1, clearly distinguished restorers from partial restorers. All the improved lines of Swarna possessing Rf3 and Rf4 genes showed complete fertility restoration in test crosses with higher grain yield heterosis. few rice hybrids developed by using converted restorers were evaluated in multi location testing under the All india co-ordinated Rice improvement project (AicRip). the results indicated that new rice hybrids expressed higher heterosis with matching grain quality attributes like Swarna. This study provides significantly novel and relevant restorers to enhance and economize future hybrid rice breeding programs.Rice (O. sativa L.) is the most important staple food crop for more than half of the world's population and it is cultivated in an area of 44.5 million hectare in India with the production of 106.5 million tonnes during the year 2016 1 . After the advent of high yielding semi-dwarf rice varieties, hybrid rice technology has been touted as a major strategy for enhancing the genetic yield potential of rice. The success of hybrid rice technology has been very well demonstrated in China, which produces 146.5 million tonnes of rice from 30.32 million hectares 1 . This significant increase in production in China is mainly due to cultivation of hybrid rice (with >50% area and production under rice hybrids). Several technical challenges, market and policy constraints has limited the development and diffusion of hybrid rice outside China 2 . In India, hybrid rice is cultivated in an area of ~3 million hectares 3 , which is about 6.7% of total area of rice cultivation. Hybrid rice accounts for less than 10% of the area under rice cultivation in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines and just 10% in Vietnam.Hybrid rice technology aims to increase the yield potential of rice by exploiting the phenomenon of hybrid vigour or heterosis. Cytoplasmic male sterility coupled with fertility restoration controlled by nuclear genes is a very useful tool in exploiting heterosis in self pollinated crops. In rice, three CMS systems viz. Wild Abortive (WA), Boro II (BT) and Honglian (HL) are deployed for commercial hybrid rice seed production 4,5 . The most widely used CMS system in rice is based on wild abortive (WA) cytoplasm derived from Oryza sativa f. Spontanea 6,7 . The WA-CMS system is highly stable with compl...