Crop physiology is a broad subject and a comprehensive treatise of all its aspects is impossible, even in a whole volume dedicated to the subject. With a few exceptions, plant physiology, rather than crop physiology, is commonly the focus when physiological aspects of plant growth and development are reviewed in biological sciences. Plant and crop physiology are distinguishable by the manner in which one is almost purely basic and the other tends towards application of the science in crop management. Therefore, the objective of this review was to highlight crop production-oriented physiological research that has shaped our current knowledge and research activities in the past few decades, especially the latter part of the past century. Source-sink relationships, stress physiology, mineral nutrition and seed physiology were identified as the key aspects of crop physiology that influence crop production. Each of these aspects is addressed to identify its significance in crop performance and to highlight both the breakthroughs and gaps in our contemporary knowledge of crop physiology. There was no attempt to provide fundamental interpretations. The reader is referred to relevant appraisals of crop and plant physiology, to gain further insight into original data. Since the review is also meant to contribute to further education in crop production, views on the challenge of training future crop scientists are expressed in the final section.