The CBGP new External scientific Advisory Board (EAB), composed of internationally renowned researchers in the fields of plant biotechnology and genomics, met on Thursday 15th of January. This meeting, the first since the renewal of this committee, was attended in person by Professor Nick Talbot, Executive Director of The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL, UK) and Chair of the EAB; Professor Ari Pekka Mähönen, Principal Investigator of the Plant Growth Dynamics group at the University of Helsinki (Finland); Professor Purificación López-García, Scientific Director at the CNRS (France); and Professor José Manuel Pardo Prieto, Principal Investigator at the IBVF in Seville (Spain). Professor Maria J. Harrison, Adjunct Professor at Cornell University (USA); Professor Jose Miguel Alonso, Principal Investigator at the University of North Carolina (USA); and Professor Nicola Patron, Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge (UK), participated remotely in this first meeting of this new phase of the CBGP EAB.