The first draft of the genome sequence of a crop plant, rice, has just been reported, and this will soon be followed by similar data from other plants. In addition, the technologies for global assessment of gene expression (transcript analysis) and protein abundance (proteome analysis) are becoming increasingly efficient. This review summarises this progress, together with techniques for identification of gene function and the relationship to protein structure. It then describes some applications of these genomic and post-genomic methods to crop improvement.