The Potential of Proteomics Technologies for Crop Improvement under Drought Conditions

Abstract

Sustainable food production is a major challenge to our current agricultural systems. At the global level, water stress is one of the most critical abiotic factors that affect crop productivity. Currently, a vast amount of research efforts are being laid down to generate molecular information leading to an understanding of this abiotic stress factor. Although gene expression analysis at the transcription level has enhanced our understanding regarding the response of plants to drought stress, many questions remain unanswered at the protein level. In view of the fact that the plant proteome is highly dynamic in nature, proteomics is becoming essential for the study of many different aspects of plant functions. Further, proteomics is also a key part of the –omics suite of techniques and facilitates a systems biology approach to biological problems. Although proteomics studies of drought responses in crop plants are still in their infancy, recent significant progress illustrates the promise of proteomics projects for improving drought stress responses in crop plants. This review mainly focuses on the response of various plant proteomes under drought stress conditions. The results of previous comparative proteomics investigations are analyzed, which allow us to gather information on how different plant species alter their proteome to sustain themselves under the drought stress conditions. We predict that proteomics-based projects will continue the discovery of novel gene targets for crop improvement and that a systems biology approach, that includes proteomics, holds great promise for the future of agriculture.