Abstract: Rice plants respond to salinity stress in different ways and accumulation of phenolic compounds is one of them. An experiment was carried out presently to analyze the variation of accumulation of phenolics in some native rice cultivars of North Kerala, India in response to salt stress. Five cultivars namely Orthadian, Orkazhama, Kuthiru, Kuttusan and Chovvarian collected from one of the saline rice tracts of Kerala and two cultivars namely Kunhutty and Veliyan collected from one of the non-saline rice tracts of Kerala were used for the study. The plants were treated with gradually increasing concentrations of NaCl varying from 0-200 mM starting from the 45th day of growth onwards mimicking the gradually increasing salt content of the salinity prone rice farms of the study area and the quantity of total phenolics was investigated in each case. The cultivars collected from both the saline and non-saline rice tracts showed gradual increase in the accumulation of total phenolics in response to increase in salt stress. The cultivars showed differential variation in the accumulation of total phenolics in relation to salt stress showing that the character was cultivar specific. Among the cultivars studied, Kuthiru showed the highest quantity of phenolic compounds and Orkazhama showed the highest percentage of increase of phenolics over the control plants in relation to increase in salt stress. Salt stress tolerant cultivars can be further screened for the production of higher quantity of phenolics in response to salt stress with an objective of improving the antioxidant production potential of such cultivars.