Proteomics of rice - our most valuable food crop

As global climate changes, agricultural production faces serious challenges from increased frequency and severity of floods and droughts, severe temperature changes, and disease breakouts, that in turn will lead to serious threats to plant vegetation worldwide. Rice, which is the most widely planted staple food crop around the world, is under threat from global climate change. As a result, understanding how rice adapts to the changing climate will increasingly be crucial. Proteomics as an integrated approach can play a role in unraveling the underlying mechanisms and help to address the growing demand for food. In this chapter, the current status of rice proteomics is discussed, and commonly occurring stress response proteins are collated; these will have an ever-increasing impact on our understanding of molecular mechanisms of stress response in rice and provide valuable information for selective rice breeding in the future.