The present dataset combines transcriptomic and micro- scopic analyses to investigate the responses of winter oilseed rape (WOSR, Brassica napus L., cultivar Aviso) to soil drought, with a focus on differences between young and early- senescent old leaves. For microscopy, 36 scans of 1 to 5 leaf cross-sections were acquired from paraffin-embedded leaf disc samples using a scanner with a 40x lens (Pan- noramic Confocal, 3DHistech), capturing a large field of view (8-mm-long observed leaf tissue). The raw scanned cross-sections and analyzed images are available under doi. org/10.57745/RK5PM3 in the Recherche Data Gouvrepository. These high-quality scans enable the differentiation of mes- ophyll cells and tissues. Software analysis yielded a dataset with 54 selected cross-sectional areas, 291 delimited sur- faces of palisade, spongy, and vessel tissues, and 11,136 in- dividually delimited cells from the palisade and spongy lay- ers. For transcriptomics, an Illumina Novaseq sequencer was used to generate 390 Gb of mRNA paired-end reads. The raw reads were filtered, mapped, and assigned to genes from the Brassica napus reference genome Darmor-bzh v10,which were subsequently used to identify differentially ex- pressed genes (DEGs) and to perform gene ontology enrich- ment analysis. The raw reads are accessible under acces- sion PRJNA939927 at the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA). This high-quality dataset provides insights into the molec- ular mechanisms underlying oilseed rape ʼs response to soil drought and may aid in the development of drought-tolerant cultivars. A total of 17,975 DEGs were identified between well-watered and severe drought conditions across the con- trasted leaf developmental stages.