Technical Abstract: Hybrid rice exhibits a yield advantage of 15 to 20 percent (or more than one ton of paddy rice per hectare) over the best traditional varieties. Because rice plants are self-pollinating, commercial production of hybrid seed plays a key role in successful implementation of hybrid rice. Stigma exsertion and associated spikelet traits are important to increase pollination opportunity for a higher yield of hybrid seed because the exserted stigmas remain viable up to six days. A mini-core sample from the USDA rice core collection was phenotyped for nine traits of stigma and spikelet and genotyped with 109 DNA markers. As a result, we identified 34 marker-trait associations involving 22 SSR markers for eight traits. Four markers were associated with single stigma exsertion (SStgE), six with dual exsertion (DStgE) and five with total exsertion. RM5_Chr1 played a major role and explained 35% of the phenotypic variation for DStgE and 17% for SStgE. Numerous markers were co-associated with multiple traits that were phenotypically correlated, i.e. RM12521_Chr2 was associated with all three correlated spikelet traits. These correspondences between trait-trait correlation and trait-marker association confirmed the associations. These identified associations could be used in marker-assisted breeding to improve stigma exsertion in rice.