Stress responsive genes are expressed in response to mild non-lethal induction stress. An optimum induction protocol for salinity stress was developed for finger millet seedlings. Seedlings induced with 200 mM NaCl showed substantially high recovery growth compared to non-induced seedlings. The addition of ABA during induction markedly increased recovery growth when challenged with a very high concentration of NaCl (up to 600 mM). A number of stress responsive proteins were expressed upon induction. Among them, 21 kDa protein was the most prominent. 3 5 S methionine incorporation studies showed that >60% of the total label in the heat stable protein fraction was in the 21 kDa protein. The expression of this protein was seen within 2 h of induction stress. Further, the 21 kDa protein is induced under desiccation, low temperature, ABA and ABA together with NaCl, indicating that it is ABA responsive. This protein showed considerable accumulation in the mature seed and exhibited a strong cross-reaction with the antibodies raised against the conserved sequence of LEA 1 group of proteins, suggesting that the 21 kDa protein belongs to LEA 1. The relevance of this protein was examined in species varying in stress tolerance (finger millet, setaria, proso millet and cucumber). Cucumber, a salinity sensitive species, did not show any detectable level of expression of this protein. The relatively tolerant species, such as finger millet and proso millet, showed higher levels of expression compared to setaria, which is a sensitive species, signifying the relevance of the 21 kDa protein in stress tolerance.