The breeding of innovative and adapted crop cultivars with integration of new genetic diversity is a key component in the transition to sustainable crop production. Crop improvement programs largely rely on meiotic recombination and associated formation of crossovers (COs) to introduce genetic variability and uncover new valuable genotypes. However, in most crops, the rate and positioning of meiotic COs along the chromosome is tightly regulated at the molecular level. Various mechanisms, such as CO interference and (peri-)centromeric suppression, restrict the number of COs and bias their distribution, resulting in a low occurrence of double CO events. As a consequence, the efficiency and success of many breeding pipelines is limited, as a significant part of the available genetic variation cannot be exploited, severe linkage drag may occur, and the resolution of QTL mapping approaches is strongly impacted. The MeiCOntrol consortium aims to address this major breeding bottleneck by developing genetic resources and treatment procedures to boost the extent of meiotic crossing-over in three diverse crop models, maize, soybean and tomato, with a particular focus on increasing (peri-)centromeric recombination and reducing CO interference. For this, we will functionally characterize CO gene orthologs directly in these crops to inform the engineering of 'CO inducer' lines. In parallel, we will tap into the standing natural variation to screen for germplasm lines that infer desired shifts in the CO landscape. In addition, we will systematically monitor environmental CO plasticity for selected crops with integration of genotypic variability as a way to identify universal treatments to boost meiotic crossing-overs in crop breeding. In conclusion, the MeioCOntrol project will yield new state-of-the-art technologies to measure and modulate the meiotic CO profile in three model crops with broad applicability for unlocking genetic diversity in various breeding programs.