In a world where climate change is real and its consequences are unprecedented, understanding of the plant adaptive capacity and native stress-responsive machinery is crucial. In recent years, universal stress proteins (USPs) have received much attention in the field of plant science due to their stress-specific transcriptional regulation. This study focuses on the extensive characterization of the gene family members in the monocot crop rice ( L. var. ). Here, we report a total of 44 genes in the rice genome. characterization of these genes showed that domain architecture played a major role in the functional diversification of the gene family which holds for all plant . On top of that, a higher conservation of members has been exhibited with a monocot genome ( L.) as compared to a dicot genome ( L.). Expression profiling of the identified genes led to the discovery of multiple genes that showed pronounced transcript alteration under various abiotic stress conditions, indicating their potential role as multi-functional stress-specific modules. Furthermore, expression validation of genes using qRT-PCR provided a strong evidence for the utility genes in building multi-stress tolerant plants. Altogether, this study provides leads to suitable candidates that could be targeted for plant breeding and genetic engineering experiments to develop stress resilient crop species.