In wheat, meta-QTLs (MQTLs), ortho-MQTLs, and candidate genes (CGs) within the MQTL regions were identified for yield and its component traits including thousand kernel weight, grain weight per spike, days to heading and maturity, plant height, grain number per spike, and spikes per plant under water-deficit conditions. For this purpose, 318 QTLs identified using 16 different wheat mapping populations were utilized. A consensus map was created using 50,000 markers with a total length of 12,280.7 cM. A total of 56 MQTLs were identified for the above eight traits and the confidence interval (CI) for individual MQTLs was mostly narrower than the average CIs of individual QTLs involved. Genetic CI of MQTLs ranged from 0.7 to 21 cM (mean = 5.95 cM), which corresponded to physical CI of 0.18-673.93 Mb (mean = 168.35 Mb). Interestingly, out of 56 MQTLs, 45 MQTLs were reported to be co-localized with significant SNPs (or marker-trait associations) reported in earlier genome-wide association mapping studies. Nine promising MQTLs called ‘breeders MQTLs’ associated with the different drought-responsive traits were also selected and recommended to be applied in the marker-assisted breeding programme for the development of novel drought-tolerant wheat cultivars. The effort was also made for mining the ortho-MQTLs using synteny/collinearity among the cereal genomes; this analysis enabled the detection of 12 ortho-MQTLs between ‘wheat and rice’, ‘wheat and maize’ and among ‘wheat, maize and rice’. Furthermore, we identified 1,497 CGs within all 56 MQTL regions. Expression analysis of these CGs using publically available expression dataset(s) allowed the detection of 64 differentially expressed CGs under water deficit conditions. These most likely CGs encoded proteins mainly related to the following families: zinc finger, cytochrome P450 protein, AP2/ERF domain, plant peroxidase, glycosyl transferase, glycoside hydrolase etc. The outcomes of the present study may be beneficial for breeders for generating high-yielding water-stress tolerant wheat cultivars and for geneticists/biotechnologists for basic strategic research involving fine mapping of promising MQTLs and cloning of genes across the three cereals studied.