Understanding physiological processes in plants and their responses to the environment, including pathogens, helps in easier and more efficient solving of problems connected with production of economically important plants. Understanding the response of plants to biotic stress is necessary for breeding resistant agronomically important crops, which enable the use of harmful chemicals to be decreased and the yield increased. The same goal could be achieved by growing transgenic plants resistant to pathogens. We investigate the response of plants, including Slovene varieties, to pathogens, which increases the importance of our results for Slovenia. More and more products important for the pharmaceutical industry are produced by biotechnological methods. We have increased the production of pharmaceutically important metabolites by different methodological approaches and developed different analytical techniques for Slovene industry. We are also involved in the education of students of biology, microbiology, agronomy and biotechnology, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and in the transfer of young researchers to industry, particularly to pharmaceutical company KRKA, and other companies like Semenarna, Omega, BIA Separations, Educell, governmental institutions and to the universities. We developed and introduced many modern diagnostic methods for plant pathogens for laboratory testing of samples for growers, importers and inspection services. In the last few years, we developed some routine phytodiagnostic procedures using the most recent laboratory techniques, for phytosanitary control of imported plants and for domestic growers as well as for the Republic Inspectorate for Agriculture, Forestry and Food and for the Phytosanitary Administration, at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food. In future these activities will be intensified since, as EU members, a broad knowledge of plant protection is needed to meet the demands of EU legislation. Basic knowledge obtained in molecular plant biology has been transferred as experises to state services, especially to those of the Ministry of the Environment, Spatial Planning and Energy and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food, since we were involved in the preparation of legislation and regulation in the fields of plant protection and genetically modified plants. Since 2002 our department has been actively involved in the development of a national biosafety framework, where we are providing expert support to Ministry of Environment, Spatial Planning and Energy and other competent governmental bodies through different national and international projects (UNEP). Our experts are also members of scientific committees for risk assessment of genetically modified organisms (GSO). Our research on the transformation of plant technology was also the basis for developing the accredited laboratory for GSO detection, which services competent inspectorates and the private sector. National institute of biology, Department of Plant physiology and biotechnology was accredited by Slovenian accreditation on 22.8. 2003 for qualitative and quantitative testing of genetically modified organisms (No. L-051). Accreditation was granted for genetically modified organisms and their products in seeds, grains, plants, raw materials, food and feed. Slovenian Accreditation has signed the multilateral agreement with European Accreditation.