Abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity and high temperature stress seriously affect plant growth, yield and quality of crops. Under adversity stresses, plants recognize and transmit stress signals, activate the expression of functional genes, and finally to alleviate or defend against the damage which abiotic stress had made to plants. Among them, the phosphorylation and dephosphorylation of protein kinases and phosphatases make a role of switch in response to external stress. In general, phosphorylation of protein kinases open signal transduction pathway, and when signal disappears, it will shut off to phosphorylation, achieving the purpose of regulating plant normal growth. Therefore, protein kinases play an extremely important role in growth and a variety of responses to stresses in plants. In recent years, the research of plant protein kinases involved in abiotic stress responses gains much attention. In this paper, we discussed the application of different types of protein kinases in the improvement of abiotic stress resistance of crops, providing information for further research.