Strategies to Enhance Crop Resilience to Drought: From Cellular Responses to Field Management

Drought is one of the most devastating abiotic stresses limiting global crop productivity and food security. As climate change increases the frequency and severity of water deficits and altered precipitation patterns, these impacts are expected to intensify. The vulnerability of major crop species, together with competition for limited freshwater resources and arable land, underscores the urgent need for integrated strategies that enhance drought resilience. This review synthesizes recent advances in understanding drought stress responses across biological scales, from cellular and molecular mechanisms to whole-plant physiology, breeding, and agronomic management. We examine the physiological and biochemical processes that enable plants to perceive and respond to water limitations, including hormone signaling, osmotic adjustment, reactive oxygen species homeostasis, and metabolic adaptation. We further discuss how modern breeding approaches, high-throughput phenotyping, transgenic technologies, and genome editing complement conventional breeding to accelerate the development of drought-resilient crops. In addition, we evaluate emerging agricultural practices, including precision irrigation, soil and crop management strategies, and the application of biostimulants, that improve water-use efficiency and crop performance under water-limited conditions. By integrating fundamental discoveries with field-based applications, this review highlights the importance of multidisciplinary approaches for developing resilient cropping systems capable of sustaining agricultural productivity under increasing climate variability and future water scarcity.