Rice staple food for a large part of the world’s human population. An abiotic stress including drought, salinity, high temperature, and UV-irritation unfavorably influence the plant growth, development and ultimately prompts misfortunes in crop yield. Abiotic stress inspires different physiological and biochemical responses in rice plants incorporate reduction of relative water content (RWC), lower photosynthetic pigments, accumulation of osmolytes like proline, malondialdehyde (MDA) content, and ion leakage so as to acclimatize them for survival under such environmental stress condition. Consequently, understanding the physiological, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms associated with rice against ecological factors is of most extreme vital for rice breeders to improve abiotic stress tolerance in rice. This review illustrates physiological and biochemical trait responses to abiotic stress in rice plants.