Food security in the face of climate change is a fundamental challenge, particularly for developing countries like Philippines, where rice is also the major staple food. The threat of multiple biotic and abiotic stresses causes low productivity particularly for rice farmers in rainfed lowland areas. Varietal mix or VarMix technology is currently being explored in the Philippines to combat environmental stresses particularly in the unfavorable lowland areas. The exploration of this technology to address both biotic and abiotic stresses has far-reaching implication, not only for increasing profitability of rice farmers but also an eye-opener for rice research community and industry to further explore the released varieties with multi-traits and can be used for generating next-generation of VarMix combination to address future challenges in water scarcity, pest and diseases. It is crucial for rice research and rice breeders to develop a stopgap strategy to address these both abiotic and biotic stresses. Specifically until now, no single multi-trait local variety is well adapted to unfavorable rice areas in the Philippines, thus this paper.