We aimed to understand the relationship between sink, source and sink-source in Oryza sativa cultivars released in different years. With 33 rice varieties bred for materials, sink, source and sink-source were studied from 1958 to 2005 in Jilin Province. Rice genetic-improvement sink and source traits improved in Jilin Province in 47 years. For sink, panicle weight and number of seeds were positively correlated with year of release, increased by 62.93% and 37.65%, respectively, and 1.34% and 0.80% on average, respectively. For source, leaf area per plant, flag leaf photosynthetic capacity and net photosynthetic rate (P_n) were positively correlated with year of release, increased by 13.75%, 24.80% and 12.60%, with the annual growth rate 0.29%, 0.53% and 0.27% in last 47 years. Different rice varieties ear weight/plant photosynthetic capacity and grains/plant photosynthetic capacity did not differ. However, panicle weight/leaf area and grains/leaf area showed a significant positive correlation with breeding age (correlation coefficients 0.441 0, P<0.05, and 0.401 7, P<0.05). Panicle weight/P_n and grains/P_n showed a significant positive correlation with breeding age (correlation coefficients 0.509 3, P<0.01, and 0.483 2, P<0.01). Rice production can be increased as a result of sink-source interaction in Jilin Province, but improving photosynthetic capacity per unit leaf area growth lags far behind other sink-source traits. Improving the leaf P_n, leaf photosynthetic capacity should improve with the new high-yielding rice varieties breeding goals.