Beech forests (Fagus sylvatica L.) cover about 12 million hectares in Europe. Beech wood is much appreciated worldwide so that many beech forests are regularly harvested for timber production. Apart of its economical importance, European beech has also a major role in soil preservation and water cycles, which makes this species a target of ecologically-minded conservation. In order to confront the observed and predicted climatic trends, beech populations will have to adapt in situ and/or to migrate to higher latitudes/altitudes. Except in the southern part of Europe where beech seems to suffer of drought, beech groves are expending their distribution range. Then, understanding how adaptive traits and the underlying molecular variation in candidate genes evolve is a relevant subject of research. Here we present our strategy for the identification and selection of putative candidate genes involved in the response to abiotic stress in beech. About 40.000 ESTs, sequenced within the European Network of Excellence “Evoltree”, have been processed. Different criteria were adopted to select the genes. Some hundreds primer pairs were designed and tested for amplification and polymorphism. Polymorphisms at the selected genes will then be genotyped to estimate level and distribution of diversity within a population sampled along an altitudinal gradient and to dissect the role of selective pressures and demographic dynamics in European beech.