Heat stress is one of the major problems affecting the growth and yield of most of the agriculturally important crops. It causes oxidative bursts inside the cells, damaging the cell organelles, membranes, and leads to the denaturation/aggregation of enzymes (Kumar et al., 2023). In order to cope with the fluctuation in temperature, plants have developed various mechanisms like the expression of signalling molecules (like MAPK, CDPK, etc.), antioxidant enzymes (SOD, CAT, GPx, etc.), Heat shock transcription factors (TaHSFA6e, HSF3, etc.), heat shock proteins (sHSPs like HSP17, HSP26, etc.) and many other stressassociated genes like pyrrolyl disulphide isomerase, ABC-Transporter, universal stress proteins, etc. (Azameti et al., 2022).This Research Topic has been meticulously organized, featuring thirteen original research articles that have been divided into two broad areas to emphasize the findings in the best possible manner: (1) Response of plants to stress/secondary metabolites or hormones, and (2) Omics approaches for the identification of stress-associated genes and proteins.