Drought is the most pervasive issue we face in agriculture today, and water deficit is responsible for most of the global loss in yield and quality. Work in the VanBuren lab focuses on exploring the mechanisms that plants use to combat drought stress in natural and agricultural settings. We leverage large-scale, high-resolution datasets across space and time to model and predict the genetic elements, physiological signatures, and alleles controlling drought tolerance phenotypes. Our work centers on the C4 cereals maize, sorghum, teff, and various millets as well as numerous wild and model species with unique evolutionary innovations.