摘要Foxtail millet(Setaria italica),a vital drought-resistant crop,plays a significant role in ensuring food and nutritional security.However,its drought resistance mechanism is not fully understood.N6-methyladenosine(m6A)modification of RNA,a prevalent epi-transcriptomic modification in eukar-yotes,provides a binding site for m6A readers and affects plant growth and stress responses by reg-ulating RNA metabolism.In this study,we unveiled that the YT521-B homology(YTH)family gene SiYTH1 positively regulated the drought tolerance of foxtail millet.Notably,the siyth1 mutant ex-hibited reduced stomatal closure and augmented accumulation of excessive H2O2 under drought stress.Further investigations demonstrated that SiYTH1 positively regulated the transcripts har-boring m6A modification related to stomatal clo-sure and reactive oxygen species(ROS)scav-enging under drought stress.SiYTH1 was uniformly distributed in the cytoplasm of SiYTH1-GFP trans-genic foxtail millet.It formed dynamic liquid-like SiYTH1 cytosol condensates in response to drought stress.Moreover,the cytoplasmic protein SiYTH1 was identified as a distinct m6A reader,facilitating the stabilization of its directly bound SiARDP and ROS scavenging-related transcripts under drought stress.Furthermore,natural varia-tion analysis revealed SiYTH1AGTG as the dominant allele responsible for drought tolerance in foxtail millet.Collectively,this study provides novel in-sights into the intricate mechanism of m6A reader-mediated drought tolerance and presents a val-uable genetic resource for improving drought tol-erance in foxtail millet breeding.