Eastern India in general and Orissa in particular, is endowed with large number of short grain aromatic landraces. Unlike Basmati which has long slender grains, these varieties possess short and medium grains with different husk colours but endowed with the quality characters that are equal or better than Basmati like high HRR and excellent eating and cooking qualities. Purification of these varieties is a necessity for genetic improvement through pure line selection without losing their unique quality traits. The present study deals with morphological characterization and purification of some of these aromatic short grain rices of Orissa.