Intermittent drought stress in rainfed ecosystem significantly limits the production of Ranjit, the most predominant high yielding rice variety of North East India. In order to understand the genetic basis of drought tolerance a mapping population comprising 85 F4 individuals between ‘Ranjit’ and a drought tolerant cultivar, ARC10372 was developed and genotyped with 80 microsatellite markers. 7 possible linkage groups were analysed by changing the LOD values and the recombination frequencies in the Join map software package. Only 3 linkage groups were considered out of the 7 linkage groups as the map was calculated at LOD threshold and above. | Impact of LOD score and recombination frequencies on the microsatellite marker based linkage map for drought tolerance in Kharif rice of Assam