**1. Introduction**

Bangladesh is a small country geographically situated in between Himalaya and Bay of Bengal. It is among the most vulnerable countries in world to future climate change due to the flat deltaic topography, very low elevation (below 10 meters above sea level) and high population density [1–3]. Eating a lot of rice is the primary food

habit of Bangladeshi people. Next to rice, wheat is the second most important cereal crops in Bangladesh for attaining food and nutritional security [4]. Although being one of the major rice producers and consumers in world [5], consumption and import of wheat in Bangladesh are growing significantly over the years [5, 6–9]. The speedy economic growth, swift urbanization, and the associated alterations in lifestyle are accountable for the increased consumption of wheat which is not going to change [8]. Instead the demand of wheat will be enhanced in near future [4]. Despite increasing yield, gradual decrease of wheat growing area make the domestic wheat production curve more or less static [10]. At present, the domestic production of the country can only encounter around 20% of total wheat consumption [11, 12] and import is the only way for meeting her demand–supply gap [6]. Several periodic natural calamities such as salinity, drought, high temperature stress, flash floods and cyclones have been accelerated due to climate change in recent years [4, 13]. Among the abiotic stresses, drought is the most prominent and prevalent limiting factors of wheat production [14–16]. Rising temperature and changing in precipitation pattern lead to increasing incidence and intensity of drought events in country like Bangladesh [17–21]. Drought employs expressively adverse effects on production of winter crop wheat in northern and central part of Bangladesh [22, 23]. Around 3.5 million ha land are vulnerable to crop production due to drought and wheat is one of the major cereal crops under the radar of this threat [24]. Considering these facts, drought should be highly preferred in future wheat improvement programs. For attaining self-sufficiency in wheat production, wheat breeders of Bangladesh have no alternatives but to develop well adapted drought tolerant varieties [22]. In spite of the polygenic nature, there are ample opportunities to increase drought tolerance of wheat through making some alterations in genetic and molecular levels. Therefore recent wheat breeding programs for drought stress should focus on utilization of both conventional as well as advanced molecular techniques.
