ABSTRACT
Enhancing crop resistance toward various abiotic stresses and improved nutritional quality of staple food crops is an urgent need to meet an ever-increasing global demand of feeding population. Quantitative gel-free holistic proteomic approach, facilitating both quantification and identification of relatively less abundant proteins, has expedited in an identification of post-transcriptionally regulated array of functionally diverse genes playing a pivotal role in conferring resistance toward different abiotic stresses and nutritional quality of agronomically important crop species. These genes potentially serve as a rich repository that is amenable for engineering smart plants that show enhanced tolerance toward abiotic stresses and improved nutritional quality for sustainable food production. A holistic proteomic approach is an option to attain sustainability in crop yield vis-a-vis nutritional security. In this review we will focus on the proteomic approaches currently being used for improvement of staple food crops for their abiotic stress tolerance and nutritive values.
