The wild emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccoides) genepool offers a rich allelic repertoire for new climate resilience wheat. In the current study, we investigated the potential of novel wild alleles for enhancing drought tolerance in modern wheat cultivar. A set of adapted Near Isogenic Lines (NILs) was developed by introgression of wild emmer accession Zavitan into elite durum wheat (T. turgidum ssp. durum; cv. Svevo). The NILs were genotyped and anchored to both Zavitan and Svevo genomes. High-throughput image-based phonemics approach was used to characterize drought adaptive strategies among the NILs population. Cluster analysis of morpho-physiological traits revealed five clusters of drought responsive strategies, resulted from modifications in plant growth rate, architecture, and water-use-efficiency. The identified clusters were farther evaluated in field-based phenomics and analyzed for genotype × environment interactions. Highly productive NIL with enhance drought adaptation was selected for further characterization. Using high-resolution lyzemeters platform we inform the specific physiological changes from the shoot and root-soil water uptake. A significant shift in resources allocation between root and shoot was found, which was supported by enhance photosynthesis capacity under drought. Using transcriptomic analysis of the identified NIL we were able to identify novel genes and metabolic pathways associated with plant adaptations to drought and especially root-specific differently express genes. The identified genetic factors underscore the potential benefit of introducing wild alleles into modern cultivars and is likely to be useful for the selection of drought-adaptive lines in future breeding programs.