[en] Drought is the major cause of historic and modern day agricultural productivity losses throughout the world. Drought stress is a complex phenomenon and so is drought tolerance. In addition to genetic conditioning of the traits, environmental effects are difficult to account for precisely. Attempts to generate plant varieties with improved drought tolerance, using selection based breeding strategies, have proved largely unsuccessful. Therefore, progress in breeding for drought tolerance has consequently been limited. Molecular biology, however, provides some means that promise better understanding of the mechanisms of drought stress and drought tolerance. New techniques for evaluating, dissecting and mapping components of drought tolerance as well as the transfer of this information among species are accelerating the understanding of this phenomenon. Ultimately, this could lead to marker-assisted breeding for drought tolerance in some crops, improved drought tolerance is associated with many potential benefits for maintenance of rural livelihoods in developing countries, income generation and enhanced environmental health. As with many other applications of biotechnology to agriculture, the development of drought tolerant crop cultivars is at the research stage. (author)