Abstract: Wild rice is the closely related wild relatives of cultivated rice. Wild rice provides natural genetic germplasm resources for improving cultivated rice varieties as it possesses many desirable traits and favorable genes, many of which, such as resistance to diseases and insect pests, tolerance to different kinds of stresses and its cytoplasmic male sterility, have been widely used in cultivated rice breeding. In this paper, favorable traits of wild rice germplasm resources and the related genes were summarized, and their utilization potential in rice breeding were also discussed.