For a long time, public awareness of plant breeding activities was low. Since the late 1970s, the situation has changed when activists started a campaign against large multinationals because they began to buy seed companies all over the world. They were concerned about their power to control the world seed market and distribute seeds only to the rich. A few years later, with the advent of the gene technology age and the first genetically modified plants reaching the market scale a new debate came up fueled by the green movement. Since that time, any activities with genetically modified plants are strictly regulated in all industrial countries. In Europe, a number of directives have been implemented by the European Commission which have been transferred into national legislation by the member countries. Market approval for GMO varieties needs a qualified majority by the board of minsters but unfortunately there has been no agreement since more than 15 years. This was one reason why all industry activities in this field (and most academic as well) came to an end or were relocated outside the EU. Today, only a very small area (<100,000 ha) is planted with GMO seeds in Europe while acreages have been up to >150 million ha worldwide. In Europe, plant variety release and market approval is regulated by a Community Plant Variety Protection directive which gives a breeder the exclusive right to market its variety all over Europe. To get an approval, a new variety must fulfill a number of requirements. It must be novel, distinguishable and consistent and it must have an added value to the farmer/grower. Plant Breeding in worldwide and in Europe is dominated by some multinationals, however in Germany a number of small and medium sized companies are still very successful in the seed market. Those companies have a focus on a small range of crops and their activities are mostly limited to Europe with Eastern Europe gaining more importance in the past years. Interestingly, their R&D rate is among the highest of all industry (~16%) which demonstrates a great interest to adopt new technologies. The EC has supported plant breeding research by its framework programs where researchers from academia and industry work together in a multinational project. Moreover, the German government has been increasing the budget for research and technology over the past 8 years. Breeding research has been supported by numerous initiatives such as GABI, the German nation al plant genome project launched in 1998. Recently, a large project to improve yield and yield stability of wheat has been started by the ministry of agriculture. The German research foundation (DFG) supports basic and applied breeding research in different ways. Every scientist working in Germany can submit a proposal to the DFG at any time. Coordinated projects such as priority programs (PP) enable the collaboration of a limited number of research groups. We have initiated a PP on flowering time research 3 years ago. Twenty groups work on different aspects of flowering time regulation in model and crop plant species (http://www.flowercrop.uni-kiel.de/en). At the end of my talk, I will present a selection of recent results from our PP with a direct impact on plant breeding.