A sharp decline in the availability of arable land and sufficient supply of irrigation water along with a continuous steep increase in food demands have exerted a pressure on farmers to produce more with fewer resources. A viable solution to release this pressure is to speed up the plant breeding process by employing biotechnology in breeding programs. The majority of biotechnological applications rely on information generated from various -omic technologies. The latest outstanding improvements in proteomic platforms and many other but related advances in plant biotechnology techniques offer various new ways to encourage the usage of these technologies by plant scientists for crop improvement programs. A combinatorial approach of accelerated gene discovery through genomics, proteomics, and other associated -omic branches of biotechnology, as an applied approach, is proving to be an effective way to speed up the crop improvement programs worldwide. In the near future, swift improvements in -omic databases are becoming critical and demand immediate attention for the effective utilization of these techniques to produce next-generation crops for the progressive farmers. Here, we have reviewed the recent advances in proteomics, as tools of biotechnology, which are offering great promise and leading the path toward crop improvement for sustainable agriculture.

A segregating population from the cross between drought sensitive (Variant-2) and drought tolerant (Cham-6) genotypes was made to identify molecular markers linked to wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) flag leaf senescence under water-stress. From 38 random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) primers, 25 inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) primers and 46 simple sequence repeat (SRR) primers were tested for polymorphism among parental genotypes and F 2 population. Quantitative trait locus (QTL) for flag leaf senescence was associated with 1 RAPD marker (Pr9), 4 ISSR markers (Pr8, AD5, AD2, and AD3), and 1 SSR marker (Xgwm382) and explained 44, 50, 35, 31, 22, and 73 % phenotypic variation, respectively. The genetic distance between flag leaf senescence gene and Pr9 was 10.0 cM (LOD score 22.9).

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HIS STUDY aimed to study the performance of durum and bread …. wheat genotypes in relation to grain filling process, under water and heat stresses. The experiment was laid out in a split plot design at Fuka Research Station, Faculty of Desert and Environmental Agriculture, Matrouh Governorate in 2011/2012 and 2012/2013 seasons. Environmental conditions were considered as the main plots and included four environments (normal, drought, heat, heat and drought conditions). Sub plots were assigned to 14 durum and bread wheat genotypes. The results revealed significant variations between studied environments for number of grains/spike, 100-grain weight and grain yield. However, number of fertile tillers/m 2 was insignificantly influenced by environments. Wheat genotypes significantly differed for the studied traits, whereas, the environment x genotypes interaction significantly affected number of fertile tillers and grain yield only in both seasons. Grain yield, as an average of the two seasons, was reduced by 26.03, 43.07 and 58.28 % at drought, heat and combined drought and heat, respectively, compared to normal conditions. All wheat genotypes suffered with application of combined drought and heat stresses in both seasons. Wheat genotypes varied in their response to heat stress conditions where the Beni suef 3 and Sohag 3 (durum wheat) and Sids 1 and Giza 168 (bread wheat) showed comparatively higher tolerance to heat stress. Stability analysis revealed a differential response of wheat genotypes (b value) to individual or combined drought and heat stress.