M.H. Kholodny Institute of Botany

M.H. Kholodny Institute of Botany of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (founded in 1921) is the leading centre of botanical research in Ukraine which is also well known abroad.
The Institute is the principal institution in Ukraine studying and recording plant and fungal diversity in the whole world and Ukraine in particular. Besides taxonomical, floristical, chorological and ecological studying phytobiota and mycobiota in the Institute the following botanical research is also undertaken: phylogeny and evolution of flowering, sporen plants and fungi, classification and dynamics of plant associations, theoretical basis of floristic analysis and phytocoenotic ecosystem monitoring, improvement of nature reserve network. The Institute is the cardinal institution in space biology and medicine part within the National Ukrainian Space Program.
National Herbarium of Plants and Fungi containing apart from the Ukrainian flora, abundant specimens from other continents of the world is the basis for scientific research in the Institute. It includes the biggest in Ukraine herbarium of cryptogamic plants (mosses, lichens) and fungi, algotheca, unique culture collection of mushrooms which are of great value for the further development in all fields of botany.
The Institute consists of nine scientific departments – systematics and floristics of vascular plants, sporen plants, mycology, geobotany, ecology of phytosystems, phytohormonology, cell biology and anatomy, membranology and phytochemistry, botanical musem, and complex interdepartamental laboratory of scientific reserve basis. The Scientific Council on botanical problems of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine at M.H. Kholodny Institute of Botany coordinates the work of 52 botanical institutions and organisations in Ukraine.
Member staff of the Institute includes 261 employers, among them 111 researchers, of them 2 academicians and 3 corresponding members of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 26 doctors and 71 candidates of science. Academician, Professor K.M. Sytnik is the director of M.H. Kholodny Institute of Botany since 1970.
The Institute is interested in collaboration with different institutions relative to advertising, design and creation of necessary preventive conditions and usage of the biggest national heritage – National Herbarium of plants and fungi, collections of permanent keeping; using of various groups of plants for indication of macroclimatic and local changes of environment; studying resources of medicinal plants, cultivating edible and medicinal fungi, studying biochemical peculiarities of secondary metabolics of blue-green algae and using them for absorbing heavy metals; in obtaining fodder protein, vegetable staff polysaccharides etc.