The Faculty of Construction and Environmental Sciences at the Białystok University of Technology (PB) has received PLN 1.7 million in funding to conduct a comprehensive study of the silver fir in the Białowieża Forest.

Selective, chemotaxonomic and genetic evaluation of the European silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) in unknown origin forest stands and in an ancestral conservational plantation from the “Tisovik” reserve in order to create a seed base for the Białowieża Forest – this is a project commissioned by the General Directorate of State Forests, which will be carried out by PB employees from the Faculty of Construction and Environmental Sciences of the PB in cooperation with Prof. Justyna Nowakowska from the Faculty of Biology and Environmental Sciences at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw.

The project will include phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and genetic studies of the silver fir in the Białowieża Forest. The establishment of a seed plantation of the studied fir population, i.e. a kind of bank of the most genetically valuable seeds in ex-situ conditions, will allow its resources to be saved.