Extreme weather events such as droughts and heat waves are likely to become more common in recent warmer climate. Thus, development of drought tolerant rice varieties has been an urgent research goal since rice is the staple food of many people on planet. To speed up development of drought tolerant rice varieties, unique research collaborations between advanced institutions and international research organization were developed and led by Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS). This collaboration brought diverse expertise together to facilitate a product development pipeline from gene totrait evaluation under target field environments. One of genes tested in this study was OsNAC6 gene. Twenty-eight independent transgenic lines that possessed homozygous single copy of introduced OsNAC6 gene were generated from a commercial tropical japonica variety, Curinga. Evaluation of the transgenic lines undercontrolled and confined rainfed conditions in Colombia revealed superior performance of some transgenic lines in grain yield compared with non-transgenic plants. The transgenic lines of other genetic backgrounds, NERICA1 and NERICA4, also showed increased grain yield under the rainfed conditions. The results strongly suggest that the gene works regardless of genetic background as common genetic component fordrought tolerance in rice under field conditions leading to increased grain yield.