Under climate change context, drought is one of the most important and complex abiotic stresses affecting major crop production worldwide, including bread wheat. Breeding for a plant model aims to prevent the climate change impacts on yields through morphological and/or physiological modifications. A total of 240 diverse elite bread wheat lines were evaluated under nine field and controlled experimental trials carried out during 2013-2016 seasons in order to identify the best agro-morphological and physiological traits associated with grain yield improvement under different drought scenarios. A combination of 8 characters (biomass, grain number per m2, fertile spike number, number of grains per fertile spike, thousand kernel weights supported by plant height, ground cover and canopy temperature depression) were highly correlated with grain yield (r > 0.80; P<0.001) under diverse drought conditions and might represent reliable secondary traits for the identification of drought tolerant genotypes. Optimized flowering and maturity time, reduced tillering, high spikes fertility and strong grain sink (number of grains) associated with a better water use efficiency balanced between vegetative and reproductive stages, high photosynthetic capacity to ensure efficient supply of assimilates and optimization of foliar area ensuring light interception (without energy transpiration waste) represent the major criteria of bread wheat plant model under unpredictable and arid Moroccan environment to achieve future yield advances. However, as breeding is a dynamic process, the plant model characteristics should be continuously revised in line with improving statistical approaches and forecasting models especially at regional basis.