Providing food security in the face of climate change and increasingly frequent extreme heat and drought events is one of the greatest global challenges. Drought is the most influential environmental factor limiting crop yields for a growing world population and leading to significant economic losses. To safeguard agricultural production, it is crucial to develop high-yielding crops with improved water use efficiency. Oat (Avena sativa L.) is an emerging crop that offers significant benefits for human health and provides a nutrient-rich plant-based protein source with a low carbon footprint. However, oats are sensitive to drought and progress in breeding drought-resistant varieties, while urgently needed, is limited. The oat genome is characterised by its enormous size, high repeat content, and complex polyploid structure. Therefore, efforts to investigate complex agricultural traits such as drought stress resistance have long been hampered by the lack of genomics resources. Recently, a fully annotated reference genome sequence of Avena sativa became available, to which I contributed significantly, representing a fundamental breakthrough. RESIST will take on the challenging high-priority task of deciphering the molecular basis of drought stress resistance in oat, providing substantial solutions to secure yields of this emerging, healthy and versatile crop. To this end, RESIST will exploit innovations in plant genomics and in particular oat genetics, employ cutting-edge high-throughput phenotyping methods and establish gene editing protocols that provide an innovative basis for accelerated and targeted breeding of oats. RESIST provides the indispensable foundation for the development of better-performing oat varieties under drought conditions to secure oat yields as a sustainable source of a highly nutritious, healthy, protein-rich plant-based diet for billions of people.