tAlthough mild to moderately severe drought stress may have less of an effect on rice grain yield thansevere drought stress during reproductive stage, its prevalence across rice farmers’ fields at the globallevel may be more economically significant. In this study, field experiments were conducted on selectedgenotypes with known tolerance to severe reproductive-stage drought in order to identify those thatwould produce high and stable grain yield across seasons and soil moisture conditions varying fromwell-watered to mild and moderately severe drought stress. Mild stress generally occurred during wetseasons and moderate stress happened during dry seasons. The drought stress was mild enough suchthat the time to flowering was similar under drought stress and well-watered conditions in either sea-son. However, significant grain yield reductions were incurred even at mild drought levels. Using anAMMI1 biplot analysis, IR83142-B-7-B-B, Binuhangin, IR77298-14-1-2-13, IR70215-70-CPA-3-4-1-3 andIR77298-14-1-2 were identified as the genotypes with the highest and most stable grain yields in bothwell-watered and mild to moderately severe drought stress environments. In a characterization of traitsconferring drought tolerance among the highest yielding genotypes under mild to moderate droughtstress, genotypes Binuhangin and IR70215-70-CPA-3-4-1-3 stood out for multiple physiological traitsunder drought. However, no direct correlations among genotypes between stomatal conductance, nor-malized difference vegetation index (NDVI) or root dry weight with grain or total dry matter yield wereobserved under any soil moisture level. These results reflect the complex interaction of drought responsetraits contributing to grain yield. The genotypic variation and physiological responses observed in thisstudy point to the potential of developing varieties targeted to mild and moderate drought stress usingyield as the selection criterion.