Food security is now considered to be a worldwide global priority. It necessitates research aimed to increase productivity of our major monocot crops including wheat, maize and barley. This aim can only be achieved through better understanding of crop plant biology, physiology and gene function. DNA and RNA sequencing is undergoing a revolution, rapidly providing vast amount of novel data for downstream functional genomics analyses. Here we review the most recent significant and exciting advances in the development and deployment of Barley stripe mosaic virus vector derived tools, namely Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS), Host-mediated gene silencing (HIGS), and Virus-mediated overexpression of heterologous protein (VOX). These tools have high potential to facilitate identification and functional characterisation of genes in cereal crops that play key roles in various sustainability traits, as well as genes in crop-associated organisms, such as plant pathogenic fungi, that play key roles during plant colonisation.