Jeremy

Sardinian mysteries

March 12, 2012

With the recent news that some barley and oat varieties collected by Vavilov had been repatriated to Sardinia, it become obvious that this blog needed to just get on with it and bring itself back to life. An obvious way to do so would be to recount Vavilov’s travels on the island. Alas, he has [...]

Read the full article →

Pavlovsk latest, but not very new

March 5, 2012

News of the Pavlovsk Experiment Station has been sitting ignored on the Vavilov Institute’s website since November of last year. The crux of the matter is the legal status of the land on which the priceless collection of crop diversity is maintained. On the morning of 9 November 2011 President Dmitry Medvedev published a decree [...]

Read the full article →

BBC gives Vavilov his due

July 6, 2011

Trapped in Italy, it can be annoying to discover that a television programme that people recommend is not available in my country. Others’ too, I imagine. So I feel justified in sharing a segment from the final episode of the series Botany: A Blooming History. The episode traced the history of plant genetics; a nice [...]

Read the full article →

To grow bananas from date seeds

April 28, 2011

A chance remark on a friend’s blog prompted me to try and pick up a trail that had gone quite cold. Her friend was remarking that “the dates groves that flourish in Mexico’s Baja California oases were first planted by the Jesuit missionaries with seeds from North Africa”. Vavilov’s contact in Algeria, Louis Trabut, is [...]

Read the full article →

Vavilov Institute publishes meeting summary and policy statement

April 14, 2011

The N.I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry (VIR) recently published a summary of the two-day meeting on the nutritional value of the berry fruits in the VIR’s collection at Pavlovsk and a policy statement by the International Working Group. Has there been any response from the authorities?

Read the full article →

Russia’s promises to the world, Part 2

April 6, 2011

A second wonderful statement, this time from Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, delivered to the World Grain Forum in St Petersburg in June 2009. “…To finish my introductory speech, I would like to emphasize the absolute importance of research in crop science. Therefore, it is utterly not by accident that this forum is held in St [...]

Read the full article →

Russia’s promises to the world, Part 1

April 5, 2011

The Director of the Vavilov Institute, Nikolay Dzyubenko, reminded participants at last week’s berry meeting that the Russian Federation had made firm commitments to share its genetic resources with the world. He mentioned two recent statements by political leaders, and thanks to the good offices of Sergey Alexanian, Vice Director for International Relations at the [...]

Read the full article →

The virtues of fruit diversity: a price far above rubies

March 31, 2011

A second round-up of events today at the meeting about the crop diversity collections of the Pavlovsk Experiment Station, which are threatened with destruction for housing The second day of the meeting was a chance for the project team to provide some context for their work of the past 3 years, for an audience which [...]

Read the full article →

More pictures from Pavlovsk meeting

March 31, 2011

Read the full article →

Nutritional analysis of Pavlovsk samples bears fruit

March 30, 2011

This just in from Our Man on Nevsky Prospekt with the thermal underwear and the Kevlar vest. Do 4,700 berry plants, belonging to 542 species, 165 genera and 48 families have a value that is greater than what you’d pay for the land they’re sitting on? The question may not be stated so boldly in [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries