It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the IAPB congress website, thank you for taking the time to stop by. It seems almost trite to say that we are living in challenging times. Advances in science and technology have continued apace through the early parts of the 21st century, but still in our ‘global village’ millions of people go hungry every day with millions more suffering from the effects of ‘hidden hunger’. Norman Borlaug, an agricultural scientist, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work and was credited with saving a billion people from starvation. He once said that you can’t build peace on empty stomachs. How to feed a burgeoning world population in the face of global climate change, loss of biodiversity, reduced land and water availability, large scale food waste and emerging pests and pathogens are amongst many of the challenges facing us today. To achieve global food security, in an increasingly insecure world, demands cooperative effort between the public and private sector and strong commitment from Governments worldwide to invest in innovative research and development in areas such as Plant Science.

Founded in 1963, the International Association for Plant Biotechnology (www.iapbhome.com ) is the largest international professional organisation representing the interests of the world-wide plant biotechnology community and has been hosting successful symposia around the world since the early 60’s. It has been almost 25 years since this symposium was last held in Europe and we are excited to be bringing this meeting to a world class venue in the city of Dublin for the 14th IAPB quadrennial symposium from August 19th to 24th 2018 where we promise you a truly memorable experience.