EN
Considered to be the most natural of all other Polish stands Picea abies in Białowieża Forest has suffered severely of bark beetle damages for decades. In order to find out some historical events in native Norway spruce stands diversity at regional level, we carried out the study on polymorphism with DNA markers and performed Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCoA) on the basis of genetic distance matrix. Two ranges (i.e. Baltico−Nordic and Hercyno−Carpathian) of Norway spruce cover north−eastern and southern Poland, respectively. The spruceless zone separates the these two ranges in lowland Poland. From genetic point of view, the Baltico−Nordic P. abies populations mainly harbor mitochondrial haplotype ‘c', whereas the spruces from the Hercyno−Carpathian range – haplotype ‘a'. Until recently, the Białowieża Forest has been considered to belong to the northern range of spruce occurrence in Europe. Seven populations from Białowieża Forest were studied (two of them from the Strict Reserve in Białowieski National Park) according to mitochondrial DNA diversity, and compared with genetic diversity found in 24 other populations located in Białystok Regional Directorate of the State Forests (north−eastern Poland). All studied spruce populations were more than 100 years old and were of natural origin. As result, the spruces from the Białowieża Forest harbored three mitochondrial haplotypes of the nad1 gene (‘c', ‘a' and ‘a1'), with the haplotype ‘a' being more frequently present (>51%) than the haplotype ‘c'. The spruce stands from Białowieża Forest have the highest gene diversity (h Nei=0.527) comparing to the other stands from the Białystok RDSF. The PCoA proved the particularity of the spruces from Białowieża Forest grouping them into one cluster of genetic similarity. Our data demonstrated that most of Norway spruces populations from Białystok RDSF harbor haplotype ‘c', which confirms their historical relationship with the Baltico−Nordic range of P. abies in Europe, while most spruces from Białowieża Forest have different historic origin, because they share high frequency of the southern haplotype ‘a'. It also turned out that Norway spruce populations from two different European ranges met in lowland Poland after the last glacial period, as proved by the presence of two mitochondrial haplotypes ‘a' and ‘c'. It can be assumed, that the spruceless zone was created by human activity in the past millennia. The results of all molecular analyses confirmed the unique character of spruces of Białowieża Forest, which is distinguished by the greater richness of the gene pool in comparison to the region of Białystok RDSF as well as good adaptation to local environmental conditions.