Proteomics as a tool to understand the biology of agricultural crops

Since the productivity of crops is directly dependent on the environmental conditions, researchers have always been keen to understand the responses of these environmental fluctuations in order to develop stress-tolerant crops. Development and advancements in high-throughput omics approaches in recent years have paved a way for the systemic dissection of molecular pathways that are activated in response to a variety of adverse environmental (stress) conditions. Of the different omics approaches, proteomics has played a significant role in understanding the biology of agricultural crops. Since proteins are the functional players in the biological systems, system-wide identification of proteins provides a better picture of underlying changes in response to any external stimulus. High-throughput proteome analysis of agricultural crops has led to the identification of several protein candidates involved in the plant defense and growth and regulation, among others. In this chapter, we have summarized the progress made so far in the field of proteomics to provide the possible tools that can be used on the agricultural crops to identify the potential candidates, which can be targeted in breeding programs to develop potential stress-tolerant crops with improved yield.