His name is familiar to some as an ‘Indiana Jones’ who roamed around the world collecting crops and seeds, as someone who established the first global seed bank, as a martyr who died in prison despite his extraordinary accomplishments, and as the person who inspired so many scientists to sacrifice their everything to save a priceless seed bank during the Second World War. Nicolai Ivanovich Vavilov (1887-1943) was a remarkable agricultural scientist in the former USSR.
Even today, one century later, it continues to be the foundation for the study and use of crops and livestock. In fact, this work has been critical to preserving plant genetic resources and to protect the rights of farmers who had initially developed crop diversity. It is also central to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and related discussions. He observed that varieties and their closest wild relatives tended to be confined to a geographic region. This is what we expect under evolution: every species originates at a particular time and place, and undergoes changes as it spreads to other regions. Vavilov went further than others, like Alphonse de Candolle, and examined not just one or two crops but an array, as well as the prehistoric cultural conditions in which they were modified.
One of Vavilov’s major contributions was his paper titled ‘Studies on the origin of cultivated plants’, published in 1926.
For thousands of years, human beings selected crops for the features they wanted. Petersburg). He and his associates also conducted careful, methodical studies in a large number of field stations located in different climatic and geographical regions of the former Soviet Union. It was a large-scale experiment that allowed the scientists to analyse crop variations in diverse conditions at the field level. These efforts speeded up the rate at which varieties with suitable features could be identified for introduction or breeding in different regions. Vavilov stood on the shoulders of giants — botanists, geneticists and breeders who preceded him. The scientist Eduard Regel had already put Russia on the forefront of applied botany. Regel also recognised Vavilov’s talents and placed him in positions that allowed Vavilov to interact with leading scientists across the world.
Vavilov explored and collected seeds of a large number — some 2.5 lakh — of crop varieties and species. The seeds were maintained in a facility that he built into a global seed bank in 1921 in Leningrad (now St.
These needs varied according to factors such as the climate, soils, landscape, and cultural history.
