Functional Genomics for Tolerance to Abiotic Stress in Cereals N.SreenivasuluauthorR KVarshneyauthorP KKishoreauthorWWeschkeauthorThe world food grain production needs to be doubled by the year 2050 to meet the ever growing demands of the population (Tilman et al., 2002). This goal needs to be achieved despite decreased arable land, dwindling water resources, and the environmental constraints such as drought, water logging, excess heat, frost, salinity, metal toxicity and nutrient imbalances, which cause major losses in cereal grain production. Drought, salinity and cold stress alone are known to cause nearly 35% of cereal crop losses throughout the world (Quarrie et al., 1999). The effectiveness of traditional breeding approaches to deal with the problem is limited due to complex nature of stress tolerance traits and due to incompatibility barriers encountered during transfer of genes from wild species to cultivated ones. Therefore, newer strategies need to be used for developing crop plants thatGenetics and Genomics2005Springer NetherlandsBook Section