Agro ecosystems’ resilience is one of the contributing factors to global food security and end hunger. However, climate change and other anthropogenic factors have threatened agro ecosystems’ resilience worldwide. In this context, the study was conducted to explore the key concepts applicable to agro ecosystems’ resilience, which supports the development of an initial framework targeting to support agro ecosystems’ resilience-related research within higher education institutions as the next stage of the study. The methodology consists of a systematic literature review to identify the key thematic areas. A thematic analysis was conducted to extract the key themes from the reviewed sources, and based on classification techniques, key information was generated. The results were illustrated in three-tiered framework, illustrating different orders of concepts derived from the analysis. The first layer comprises five thematic areas related to agro-ecosystems’ resilience and higher education. They are resilience, agro-ecosystems, higher education, environment and policy and governance. The second layer demonstrates twenty-one concepts, which are extended from the first layer categories. The final, third, layer comprises of 125 operational level concepts relating to the second layer. The initial framework derived from the systematic literature review provides directions towards agro-ecosystems’ resilience with the support of higher education institutions by conducting survey to evaluate their present status and to identify enablers and barriers and for evaluating their research background and opportunities related to agro ecosystems resilience.