1923: Crop diversity - The book of science

Crop diversity
Diversity
Biodiversity
Commentary

Crop diversity

Nikolai Vavilov identified eight centers
of the greatest diversity of crop species
which he thought were their centers of origin.
He organized expeditions that collected seeds
from all around the world.
He established a seed bank in Leningrad
for the world’s largest collection of seeds.
He set up 115 experimental stations across
the Soviet Union to grow crops from these seeds.
He was proponent of Mendel’s laws of inheritance,
but the head of Soviet agriculture,
Trofim Leysenko, was a Lamarckian,
who claimed that an acquired characteristic
in a variety of wheat would be inherited,
so he had Vavilov denounced and arrested
to die in Stalin’s prison.

Diversity

Vavilov knew
we need to preserve
the genetic diversity
of food crops.
He was a victim
of an effort
to suppress
dissent.

Biodiversity

Among the seeds protected
in the Vavilov seed bank
is a yellow potato that looks like you.
Its color doesn’t matter,
only its inner soul—its soul
that survives ridicule, that thrives
in cold summers and salty soil,
and that can grow when thrown
into a ditch beside the road.

During the twenty-eight-month siege of Leningrad, scientists at the Vavilov Institute boxed up and hid a cross-section of the collected seeds and refused to eat them, although nine of them died of starvation.