The Institute of Botany, a State Research Institute, leads the research on plants, fungi and microorganisms in Lithuania. Since the establishment in 1959, the Institute conducts scientific studies in botany, mycology, virology, phytopathology, biodeterioration and bioremediation, phytosociology, vegetation science and vegetation mapping, plant physiology and genetics. The Institute also possesses the Field Experimental Station with extensive field collections of economic plants and Coastal Biological Station for ecological investigations of the Curonian Spit, Curonian Lagoon and the Baltic Sea.

Research at the Institute deals with plants, fungi and microorganisms at organism, species, population, community and ecosystem levels answering challenges of modern changing environment. The Institute makes significant contribution to national ecological monitoring and environmental policy.

The Institute maintains several collections: the largest national collection of fungi, second largest collection of vascular plants and bryophytes as well as living collections of economic plants and microorganisms.

Together with Vilnius University, the Institute prepares scientists and highly qualified lecturers for the universities in Lithuania.

The Institute focuses on the following research fields:

1. Botanical diversity of Lithuania: identification and generalisation on the level of communities.
2. Genetic and physiological fundaments of plant productivity: research on the control possibilities of genetic and physiological processes determining growth and productivity.
3. Diversity of Lithuanian mycobiota: identification and generalisation on the species level; regularities of formation of microorganism communities.

The Institute, together with Vilnius University, was granted the right to doctoral studies. The Doctor's Degree is confered in the field of biomedical sciences (B 000) in the trend of botany (04 B) and in the branch of  microbiology, bacteriology, virology, mycology (B 230) of the biology (01 B) trend. The Institute has been granted the right to confer the degree of Habilitated Doctor of Biomedical Sciences in the trend of botany (04 B).