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Abstract Global crop production faces increasing threats from the rise in frequency, duration, and intensity of drought and heat stress events due to climate change. Most staple food crops, including wheat, rice, soybean, and corn that provide over half of the world’s caloric intake, are not well adapted to withstand heat or drought. Efforts to breed or engineer stress-tolerant crops have had limited success due to the complexity of tolerance mechanisms and the variability of agricultural environments. Effective solutions require a shift towards fundamental research that incorporates realistic agricultural settings and focuses on practical outcomes for farmers. This review explores the genetic and environmental factors affecting heat and drought tolerance in major crops, examines the physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying these stress responses, and evaluates the limitations of current breeding programs and models. It also discusses emerging technologies and approaches that could enhance crop resilience, such as synthetic biology, advanced breeding techniques, and high-throughput phenotyping. Finally, this review emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary research and collaboration with stakeholders to translate fundamental research into practical agricultural solutions.