Cereals are considered major food crops that provide essential nutrients to the human population. However, increasing threats of biotic and abiotic stress are greatly influencing crop productivity every year. This is a significant challenge to attain global food security. Developing the mechanisms of stress tolerance at the molecular level in these essential crops is of primary interest for the development of new stress-tolerant cultivars. Considering this, significant advancements have been made in omics techniques to explore the molecular processes of stress tolerance in crops. Given this, I have employed these advanced omics technologies to exploit stress signaling in crops. The research focused on the development of blast-resistant rice, where the comparative proteomics and phosphoproteomic analysis of contrasting rice cultivars identified potential candidate genes underlying the mechanisms of disease susceptibility vs. immunity in rice. Additionally, I was part of multidisciplinary collaborative projects, where I contributed to the development of an efficient and reproducible transformation method in the legume crop Cicer arietinum, to expedite functional genomics studies in these recalcitrant crops. 
Considering the ongoing issues of malnutrition, changing climate, food security, soil degradation, and increasing challenges of diet-related diseases, current cereal crops are not sufficient to overcome these problems. Hence, during my post-doctoral experience, I diverted my research towards millets, as they are considered Nutri cereals. I have contributed to transcriptomic analysis of important millet species, namely, foxtail millet and Kodo millet. My research interest involves understanding the molecular mechanisms of stress responses and nutritional aspects in millet crops.