We quantify the constraints on the flavour separation between the quarks and antiquarks in the proton provided by the recent forward weak gauge boson production data from the LHCb experiment at $sqrt{s}=7$ and 8 TeV. Performed in the framework of the NNPDF3.1 global analysis, this study highlights the key role that the LHCb W and Z data have in achieving a robust quark flavour separation in the large-x region, including the strange and charm quarks. We demonstrate how the LHCb measurements lead to improved determinations of the the up and down quark PDFs in the region $xge 0.1$, with an uncertainty reduction that can be as large as a factor 2. We also show how the LHCb forward measurements severely restrict the size of the fitted charm PDF at large x, imposing stringent constraints on non-perturbative models for the charm content of the nucleon.
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