Technical Abstract: Plants are challenged with environmental stresses such as drought, high-salinity, and high and low temperature which can adversely affect growth and development and ultimate reduce yield and quality. In order to cope with the dynamic adverse environmental changes, plants have evolved a complex network of perception and signal transduction. ABA is an important hormone that regulates this communication and leads to an acclimation response. Transcription factors act as key regulators that activate down-stream genes in the acclimation process. The APETALA 2/ethylene-responsive element binding factor (AP2/ERF) represents a large family of plant-specific transcription factors that regulate gene expression by binding to the cis-acting dehydration-responsive element/C-repeat (DRE/CRT) or GCC-box sequence on the promoters of the affected genes. This activating can result in physical, physiological or biochemical changes resulting improved growth and development. Twelve putative transcription factors were identified and real-time PCR analysis were performed which resulted in the identification of three unique transcripts in which ahERF1 was highly induced in recovery stage; and ahERF7 and ahERF8 were highly induced by drought and returned to nominal levels after recovery. Induction levels and patterns of gene-expression of ahERF1, ahERF7 and ahERF8 may be used to select plants that may have higher drought tolerance.