Selective autophagy has emerged as an essential quality control mechanism that provides robustness and resilience to plants under changing environmental conditions. It is mediated by selective autophagy receptors that simultaneously bind to eat-me signals on the cargo that needs to be degraded and the core autophagy protein ATG8. Thereby, they ensure timely and selective degradation of dysfunctional and superfluous cellular macromolecules. Despite recent advances in human cells where several selective autophagy receptors have been identified and characterized, the cargo receptor repertoire in plants remains incomplete. Furthermore, how selective autophagy pathways have been shaped by the evolutionary history of the organism has not been studied before. Here, I will present our recent findings on a multispecies and multimodal proteomics screen that allowed us to study the evolution of autophagy networks in plants. Our screen not only identified the dynamic evolutionary history of selective autophagy but also revealed a highly conserved receptor protein involved in protein aggregate clearance and heat stress tolerance. I will discuss the implications of our findings and how we use comparative cell biology to understand the molecular underpinnings of autophagy-mediated cellular quality control in plants.