The aim of this meeting is to bring together the scientific community working with plants on subjects around genome stability and modification: DNA recombination and repair, chromosome stability, meiosis, replication, epigenetics and applications in plant breeding and genome engineering.

In a world faced with increasing populations and climatic change, the importance of understanding the fundamental processes used by plants to maintain and repair their genomes is of ever-increasing importance and urgency. These processes underlie both "classical" plant breeding and the development of novel technologies for crop improvement. The great success and rapid implementation of CRISPR/Cas approaches in model and cultivated plants underlines the importance of this meeting. Increasing fundamental knowledge on DNA repair and plant genome stability and development of novel biotechnological approaches will lead to optimized applications for crop plants such as cereals and vegetables.