Food security for the fast growing population will depend on our ability to produce more per unit area without depleting more the resources base and on facilitated access of population to food commodities. The development of improved varieties with higher and stable yields has contributed to food security for the commodities of global importance such as wheat, rice, maize which are at the origin of the green revolution. Further genetic gains in yields will depend on access and use of novel genetic diversity and use of biotechnology tools to increase the efficiency of breeding programs. ICARDA has one of the richest collections of cereals and legumes totaling 135,256 accessions composed mainly of landraces and wild relatives which should be gene mined for useful genes. Introgressions from wild wheat relatives have been important sources of genetic variation: Sr2, 1B/1R and Lr19 are three examples with major impacts in developing world agriculture. Embryo rescue in vitro has allowed the development of synthetic hexaploid wheat from crosses between durum wheat and Aegilops tauschii which is contributing significantly to enlarge the genetic base of bread wheat. Synthetic hexaploid wheats are mobilizing the wealth of genes available in the D genome for the progenitor of wheat Ae. tauschii. New sets of synthetic hexaploid wheat are being produced using carefully selected parents. New alleles are identified in the progenies using molecular markers techniques. Tissue culture is routinely used for the production of doubled haploids in wheat and barley which reduces significantly the time to bread new lines. Diagnostic markers are used in ICARDA mandated crops for marker assisted selection. For location of genes either mapping of quantitative traits using biparental populations or association mapping in germplasm collections is being used.TILLING populations in various crops have been developed and are being used to identify genes responsible for various different stresses. EcoTILLING is being used to utilize natural variation of known genes. Different approaches of using biotechnological tools and novel genetic resources for enhancing resilience of major dryland crops to climate change in dry areas will be discussed.