Achieving higher production goals to adequately feed the growing world population in quality and quantity is a challenge that involves expanding the region of arable areas and facing climate change. Furthermore, the urgent need to increase food production worldwide is associated with improving food quality. Plants, as sessile organisms, are continually challenged by multiple factors such as environmental stress that generates a negative impact on most relevant crops worldwide. It is estimated that the global economic losses associated with the reduction of growth and biomass production are in the order of billions of dollars, so the identification of the molecular mechanisms by which plants respond to environmental stress is essential to develop strategies of resistance. To increase productivity, it is important to correctly identify the molecular mechanisms that limit it in situations of environmental stress. Although in recent decades much progress has been made in the knowledge of numerous physiological, metabolic processes and molecular mechanisms related to responses to environmental stress in plants, there are still many unidentified components related to productivity and the response to stress, especially in agronomically important crops. The biochemical and physiological function of a large proportion of genes involved in responses to environmental stress is not yet determined. In this context, the study of proteins with unknown function is crucial to understand their participation in the gene activation chain in stress situations. Today, genomic and post-genomic tools are available to address these studies on a global scale and contribute to designing strategies to detect new key components related to the integration of environmental stress and plant growth programs.