Conserved leaf-root metabolomic network asymmetry underpins divergent drought strategies

Plants orchestrate tissue-specific metabolic responses to osmotic stress, a major determinant of drought tolerance and crop productivity. Yet how leaf and root responses are coordinated to confer tolerance remains poorly understood. Here we show that drought tolerance in wheat is associated with a reproducible architectural asymmetry between tissue-level metabolomic correlation networks under controlled osmotic stress. In a drought-tolerant genotype, leaf networks are ∼40% denser and highly integrated, consistent with rapid photosynthetic adaptation, whereas root networks are modular and fragmented, consistent with localized responses. Temporal analysis revealed a decline in cross-tissue coordination, from early synchrony (ρ ≈ 0.546) toward greater tissue-specific organization (ρ ≈ 0.350) under prolonged stress, a pattern absent in the susceptible genotype. Bayesian structure learning provided convergent support for these architectures as statistically robust, nonrandom network organizations (P < 0.001). Our findings suggest that drought tolerance is associated with contrasting tissue-level correlation-network organization and temporally structured leaf-root coordination under osmotic stress. This framework advances our understanding of stress adaptation and provides a conceptual basis for breeding climate-resilient crops by targeting key network properties.