Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) is increasingly exposed to negative impacts of climate change, especially to drought stress, high air temperature, low temperatures in germination and emergence time, soil degradation. There are efforts of scientists, to develop genetic tools, for improving crop performance to support both resilience to climate stresses, and local adaptation to low-input agriculture. As climatic conditions, crop practices and cropping systems are changing rapidly, for sunflower it is requires to improve some characteristics of current varieties, also to look for new traits, to make the crop better adapted to these emerging challenges. Some characteristics as diseases resistance have been already improved by breeders, but the others must be considered more, for adapting sunflower to new environments and cropping systems. When compared with other field crops, sunflower has moderate water requirements, because of a deep root system, also of efficiently regulate water transpiration from leaves. However, long term water deficit can severely affect grain yield, oil content and quality and other yield traits. The maximum yield reduction is observed when drought occurs during reproductive phase. Using wild sunflowers, a significant number of inbred lines have been created by interspecific crosses, in order to be used as gene donors for important traits. By favourable genes transferring, there have been obtained genotypes with morphological and physiological characteristics, which confer a good adaptability to some important abiotic factors, including high air temperatures, in flowering time, also high soil salinity. For the new obtained hybrids, it has been studied their performances in different pedo-climatic environments and with different crop practices, being identified the better adapted to special zones, including new ones, as a new possibility for cultivating sunflower, with good results.