PAN Botanical Garden - CZRB in Powsin is an auxiliary scientific unit of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Its primary task is to study the diversity of the plant world at various organizational levels from molecular through cellular, tissue, organismal, population, biocenotic, ecosystem to the diversity of plant formations at the level of the biosphere.

What is the purpose of this research? This goal has a broad and narrow meaning. In a broad sense, it is about learning about the mechanisms of elastic adaptation (within the process of ontogeny) and plastic adaptation (in evolutionary terms) to changing environmental conditions. This includes a number of issues related to the physiology of seed aging, the development of methods for their long-term storage, the study of plant responses to various types of stressors (at the physiological, morphological, anatomical or developmental process level), the study of the interrelationship of the biotic and abiotic environment, the study of the impact of environmental changes on the plant population of a selected species, etc.). In a narrow sense, it is the development of methods and procedures to use this knowledge in efforts to preserve the biodiversity of species considered rare and threatened with extinction.

It can be said that we research to preserve.

Depletion of diversity in an era of rapid change... a little different about the causes of biodiversity loss

Thinking about the cause of complexity, it is impossible not to relate it to complex organismal structures. It can be said that the more homogeneous something's structure (simpler, less differentiated), the less advanced it is phylogenetically and/or ontogenetically. The process of differentiation is immanent to the emergence of hierarchical complexity. As the whole process of evolution indicates, differentiation is a process, on the one hand, inevitable, but also necessary for the adaptation of the internal environment (organism, ecosystem) to the dynamically changing conditions of the external environment (metasystem).

In a situation with a moderate rate of change, complexity is a stabilizing factor for the system and limits or even prevents change from occurring. Under such conditions, in the long run, a conservative strategy is more adaptive. In a situation of rapid change in the external environment, complexity is usually decomposed and replaced by super-adaptive invasive systems, which destroy the existing complexity and give new direction to the radiation of those populations of species that have withstood the new rate of change. The original complexity in such a situation seems to be an obstacle that falls prey to the dynamic changes occurring first in the external environment of the system and then in the internal system. The old order is replaced by disorder, which after some time produces a new internal structure based on a new equilibrium... and becomes the new order.

What are our efforts to protect biodiversity

The Polish Academy of Sciences Botanical Garden's team of scientists consists of florists, ecologists, biotechnologists, anatomists, geneticists and horticulturists. They are active in various biological and agricultural disciplines, including primarily conservation biology, ecology, biotechnology, anatomy, horticulture, genetics, physiology. This research brings tangible benefits to biodiversity conservation, including, most notably, the preservation in collections of ex situ and in seed banks of receding and rare species in Poland.

The Garden conducts projects for the restoration of species that have become extinct or significantly reduced in number in the area, such as bellflower, Polish warbler and fragrant flax. Each year they publish many articles and scientific monographs on plants in internationally recognized periodicals, such as Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture, Journal of Biogeography, Ecology, Trees, Frontiers in Plant Science, Protein Expression and Purification, Journal of Vegetation Sciences and many others.

For several years, intensive research has been conducted in the Central Asian region, mainly in the area of the global biodiversity hotspot Mountains of Central Asia. Scientists have prepared the first red list of endangered species for Tajikistan, described some 150 types of vegetation and identified groups of useful species for this remarkably floristically rich region. Currently, the Pamir Station is being prepared - a permanent base for scientific botanical expeditions to the Pa-miro-Alay and Tien-Shan mountains.

The seed bank of Poland's native flora is the first cryogenic bank of its kind in Europe. Its establishment in 1992 stemmed from the need to take action to safeguard the ever-depleting diversity of wild plant species in Poland. This reflected the global trend of paying special attention to the need for broadly understood protection and sustainable use of the wealth of biodiversity, as expressed in the Convention on Biological Diversity (Rio de Janeiro 1992), ratified by Poland in 1996. The primary goal of the seed bank at the PAN Botanical Garden is the effective and long-term preservation under the conditions of the ex situ genetic diversity of endangered and extinct species due to the systematic decline of their populations and sites, and the impoverishment of their gene pool.

For this purpose, seeds and spores of rare and endangered vascular plant species are collected from natural sites, then permanently preserved in liquid nitrogen vapor. The material secured in this way has a starting character in programs for the restoration of a given species to natural sites. Currently, more than 730 samples of 220 rare, endangered and protected species of Polish flora are deposited in the Bank, accounting for 40 percent of all threatened and protected species of native flora. A database of stored seed samples is also maintained.

Since 2009, there has been a project to preserve historical varieties of domestic apple trees (Malus domestica Borkh.) using cryogenic techniques (temperatures lower than -100^oC). In the course of the project, 225 historical varieties of apple trees grown in Europe and North America have been secured to date. This collection represents a kind of "iron reserve", since the use of cryogenic techniques to create it ensures that samples can be stored for a long time without losing their genetic information and viability. Results to date confirm the effectiveness of using cryogenics to secure resting apple buds. The total regeneration of historical varieties collected by our Garden and maintained in the cryogenic collection is almost 79 percent.

The Garden's place among units of its kind in Poland and around the world

The position of PAN OB - CZRB in Powsin has established itself both in the hall of the country and in Europe and is very strong. The botanical garden is currently conducting an important and very prestigious project entitled. "Florintegral...", is a leading scientific unit among botanical gardens and has outstanding collections of apple trees, magnolias, rhododendrons and roses. The latter, in particular, is constantly developing both in terms of the taxa collected, scientifically and organizationally. A measure of the recognition of our position in the botanical community is that during the period under review, the presidents of both the Council of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta in Poland and the Polish Botanical Society came from the botanical garden in Powsin. PAN OB - CZRB in Powsin also runs the secretariats of both institutions. In addition, a PAS botanical garden employee is a representative of the network of botanical gardens in Poland in the European Consortium of Botanical Gardens (EBGC) and one of the employees is a member of PROP.

If, on the other hand, we consider the narrower context of the Powsin Botanical Garden's activities and focus on domestic and foreign scientific cooperation, it has grown significantly in the last four years. To a large extent, this is due to the admission of new employees who brought their international contacts to the Garden, but also to the increased activity of the Garden's other scientific staff. An example of this is the participation of the unit's employees (Prof. Dr. Arkadiusz Nowak, Dr. Sebastian Swierszcz) in international consortia that collect and share ecological data from all over the world under certain conditions. The presence of Pusinian scientists in Central Asia and allowing researchers from all over the world to access our data has resulted in the possibility of cooperation within the framework of many projects analyzing global aspects of changes in plant cover.

Since 2017, we have been actively participating in the sPlot project (phytosociological database, currently about 4 million records), which aims to analyze ecological, biogeographical, bioclimatic, syntaxonomic features of plant communities. Since 2018, we are also consortium members of the GrassPlot grass database maintained by Juergen Dengler. Our employee (Iwona Dembicz) has been appointed one of the custodians of the database (she has emigrated), which allows her to be part of the team of authors of almost every paper created in the consortium. Since 2019, we are also permanent contributors to the base of the so-called dark biodiversity, which was established in order to understand the conditions for the absence of certain species belonging to the species pool of a given habitat, in specific patches of phytocenoses. Our collaboration in the above-mentioned consortia has resulted in authorship in the most prestigious ecological and conservation journals, such as Ecology, Journal of Biogeography and Journal of Vegetation Science, among others.

The team of Ecology and Biology of Woody Plants conducted active scientific cooperation with research centers at home and abroad (Jardín Botánico Canario, Spain; Kew Gardens, UK; Swiss Federal Research Institute, Switzerland; Mendel University, Czech Republic; University of Johannesburg, South Africa; USDA Forest Service, USA; Forest Research Institute; SGGW; Agricultural University of Cracow; University of Silesia; IBB PAN; Institute of Environmental Protection - State Research Institute.

The Conservation Genetics Research Team has collaborated with several research centers in Poland (e.g., SGGW, UP in Poznań, IUNG in Puławy, IHAR-PIB in Radzików) and abroad (e.g., Diversity Arrays Technology in Australia).