Durum wheat is the tenth most important crop in the World, but its cultivation is mostly limited to harsh, arid, and heat prone marginal lands. Breeding for tolerance to these conditions is often considered the most strategic approach to ensure adaptation, especially when paired with best agronomical practices. The word ‘adaptation’ summarizes all the research efforts conducted to identify the many traits controlling the mechanisms for withstanding or escaping the traceries of the environment. It can be summarized as “GGE vs E”. The durum wheat breeding program of ICARDA has released over 100 varieties in 25 countries since its initial inception in 1982. The strategy is to deploy genetic diversity from the genebank through targeted phenotyping methods in combination with genomic scans to dissect these ‘adaptive’ traits into simple loci. These loci can then be pyramided via a combination of international field testing, markers assisted selection, genetically-driven crossing schemes, and genomic selection to derive climate-ready cultivars. Here, several examples of this approach are presented and their implications for ‘adaptation’ are discussed.