CHAPTER 6 DNA Repair Pathways and Genes in Plants MOHD GULFISHAN 1* , TARIQ AHMAD BHAT 2 , and AZMAT JAHAN 3 1 School of Agricultural Sciences, Glocal University, Saharanpur, India 2 Department of Education, Govt. of Jammu and Kashmir, India 3 Department of Botany, AMU Aligarh, India * Corresponding author. E-mail: fishan.amu@gmail.com ABSTRACT The integrity of cellular DNA of all organism including plants is constantly at risk and may suffers damage endogenously or exogenously by different types of genotoxins such as chemical mutagens, ultraviolet light, and ionizing radiations. The most common and frequent DNA damage is due to the errors in metabolism; breaks of phosphodiester bond, modifications in nucleotide sequence, and intra- and interstrand cross links. The DNA damage, if not repaired, adversely affects plant developmental processes. Generally, plants are susceptible to the DNA damage as they are surrounded by air, soil, and water, which, sometimes, have DNA damaging factors. The process of DNA damage repair mechanism has been fairly elucidated in the mammalian, bacterial, and fungal model system. Though, the study of DNA damage and repair mechanisms in plants is still in its early stages, and Arabidopsis thaliana is at the forefront of the effort. The small genome size, rapid life cycle, and different transformation methods make Arabidopsis an absolute model plant to study eukaryotic DNA damage and repair mecha- nism. With the dawn of new molecular biology techniques, Over the last decade, tremendous progress has been made in understanding DNA damage and repair, as well as the genes involved in the process in different plants Biotechnologies and Genetics in Plant Mutation Breeding, Volume 2: Tariq Ahmad Bhat and Khalid Rehman Hakeem (Ed.) © 2023 Apple Academic Press, Inc. Co-published with CRC Press (Taylor & Francis)