The NI Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry (VIR) has responded in some detail to the report of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Expert Commission appointed by the Russian Ministry of Economic Development to look into the state of Pavlovsk Experiment Station. The response makes many points and asks many questions, in between heaping fulsome praise on the commission and its members. Among the most salient:

• Why did the experts visit incognito and not engage the curators at the Station? VIR considers this a breach of scientific ethics. The VIR points out that it would be very difficult to find their way about and to locate the various collections. Fortunately the group ran into M. Lebedev, “a head of the research nursery and private entrepreneur,” who was able to guide them round at least part of the Station’s 500 hectares.
• Why did the expert group include V.A. Dragavtsev the former head of the VIR? The VIR ays that Dragavtsev “is now widely known in Russian scientific circles … for his obsession to change the VIR directorate”.
• Why did the group not include a horticulturalist? Although it included biochemists, lecturers and the director of a botanical garden, the group “contained no expertise specifically related to the crops at the Station”.
• Why did the Expert Commission release its “report” in a press conference? No staff were involved in the broadcast, which was one-sided.
• VIR says that the Expert Commission gave the impression that the real threat to the collections was not the proposed housing development but the existing management of Pavlovsk “which is protesting the destruction”.

There’s more (of course) and the latter part of VIR’s response focuses on the Expert Commission’s proposed solution: change VIR’s management and then move the whole Institute (including Pavlovsk and 7 other stations) from the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences into the Russian Academy of Sciences. On the face of it this does rather seem like the Russian Academy of Sciences is taking to heart sage advice about never letting a good crisis go to waste. At this point VIR’s response becomes a bit muddled, and who can blame them? They point out that the RAS has no idea of the costs or difficulties of managing the collections, and allude to the RAS’s own financial problems and institute scientists striking and demonstrating for budget increases. The VIR has its own set of funny numbers too.

[D]o the highly respected experts know that an average cost of collection, maintenance and preservation of one accession in a field genebank makes around 700 Euros (Smith & Livingston, 1997), while an average monthly salary of a curator does not reach 10 thousand Rubles (239 Euros).

In the end the entire story is beginning to resemble a giant turf war with too many players, shifting alliances and no clear outcome in sight yet. VIR points out that another expert group, this one under the Ministry of Agriculture, was at Pavlovsk on 23-24 September.

We do hope, results of this audit will be more objective and professional, [and] will provide a real picture about [the] importance and value of the fruit and berry crop collection.

But in case it doesn’t …

VIR reserves all rights to assemble a foreign commission consisting of experts in the sphere of plant genetic resources, who understand what preservation of a great amount of collection accessions in the field genebank means, considering the fact the collection is being preserved not only at Pavlovsk experiment station, but also at other 7 stations, and what are the true causes of “improper care” of these accessions.

Whose experts will prevail?

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Continuing my efforts to set the record straight on Pavlovsk Experiment Station, today the question of just how unique the collections are.

In one sense, the crop diversity held at Pavlovsk certainly is unique. Many of the accessions, perhaps as much as 90%, are not held in any other genebanks. That alone makes the collection special.

Given that many of those accessions were collected decades ago, there is also a pretty good chance that they have already vanished from the wild as a result of changing use of landscapes and changing patterns of agriculture. So there’s not much hope of finding them again. Again, that makes the collection special.

And as the Global Crop Diversity Trust reminds us, although the Expert Panel appointed by the Department of Economic Development reported pretty favourably on the importance of the collections and the need to keep them going, Pavlovsk is not out of the woods yet.

The fate of the Pavlovsk collection still rests with President Medvedev, but the decision-making process remains unclear. There is no news as yet on the independent international commission, which was supposed to have been appointed. Will it be appointed? When? By whom? With what mandate? Until clarifications and assurances are given, the Trust considers the entire Pavlovsk collection seriously endangered.

That’s the sense in which Pavlovsk is, unfortunately, not at all unique. Too many genebanks, in too many places, have an uncertain future. and not just because of random acts of environmental violence, like typhoons and mudslides.

In Russia, President Putin was eying the St Petersburg headquarters of the Vavilov Institute back in 2003, a threat that in the end has not materialised. Yet. Wellesbourne and Brogdale, the UK’s national collections of vegetable and fruit diversity, have both been through the wringer lately. On October 1 Wellesbourne and the Genetic Resources Unit were officially absorbed into the new Crop Centre at Warwick University. The UK’s national vegetable collection is probably safe, for the time being, but the future of the breeding work that used to be carried out at Wellesbourne, and the many lines resulting from various crosses, is by no means clear. Brogdale too has been placed under new management, and parts of the collection duplicated at other sites where they may be safe, but it’s long-term future too is by no means assured. One could cite many other examples where national collections, built up and maintained thanks to government, are also subject to government’s budgetary whims.

The problem is that genebanks need to be maintained essentially forever. Nobody likes to make that kind of commitment. When the squeeze is on, it is too easy to cut maintenance and promise to catch up later. When later comes, the funds to catch up do not. Nor is the problem restricted to governments. Even the mighty Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research has had to spend a small fortune bringing its genebanks back up to speed, while the Global Crop Diversity Trust exists precisely to overcome the whims and vagaries of funding that threaten the survival of genebanks.

One of the problems, against which we are forever banging our heads, is the simple desire to balance costs and benefits. You can measure costs till you’re blue in the face, and come up with numbers “accurate” to the nearest cent. Benefits, however, are another matter entirely, and you’re always going to come up against the smart-alec who says that you surely don’t need to preserve everything, you can get 90% of the benefits from 10% of the material, or whatever.

As I’ve said before, I like the argument that Bonwoo Koo, Philip Pardey and Brian Wright put forward in the conclusion of their book Saving Seeds: The Economics of Conserving Crop Genetic Resources Ex Situ in the Future Harvest Centres of the CGIAR. To paraphrase: although we cannot really calculate the benefits of conserving any particular accession, we do know that the benefits in general are really very large indeed, so why not go ahead and do the conservation anyway? Alas, that hasn’t had much impact anywhere.

And so genebanks everywhere, not just at Pavlovsk, remain in danger.

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Thanks to some fantastic global support, over at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog is the news that the Expert Commission appointed to look into the collections at the Pavlovsk Experiment Station has stated that the collections are extremely valuable, are not in the best shape, need care and attention, and may be better off under new management, with additional resources made available.

This is a pretty ringing endorsement of what the scientific world and more than 50,000 ordinary people have been saying: Pavlovsk is not worthless. It is priceless.

Getting to this point was an exercise in frustration and cooperation. Frustration because although over at ABW we knew that things were moving in Russia it was very hard to discover just what was going on. The Vavilov Institute’s posts in English were somewhat opaque. ^[1] And yet they were transparent enough to allow one to hope. We tried plaintively to ask for help with translation, to no great avail, and then came the hour-long televised press conference, which was added to the mix by a commenter to the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog. ^[2] While the VIR’s page told us who was on the Expert Commission, it told us nothing about their conclusions.

Eve Emshwiller, President of the Society for Economic Botany, took up the challenge, contacted two of her people, and late this afternoon, thanks to the overnight efforts of botanist Tatyana Livshultz we had a result.

The five men being interviewed (at a press conference) are members of an expert scientific commission that was appointed by the Russian Government Department of Economic Development to examine and report on the living collections at the Pavlovsk Experimental Station. They are all scientists/academics. They conducted a 1 day site visit and submitted a report that concluded that:

1) The station holds extremely valuable (from scientific, agronomic, and historical perspective) living collections particularly the stone fruits (which was assembled beginning 80-85 years ago by the Vavilov Institute) and currants (which is a younger collection).

2) Some of these collections (particularly the stone fruit) are in very bad condition (old trees at risk of death) and need urgently to be renewed (re-grafted, re-propagated); others (e.g. the currants) are relatively well-maintained. The brambles are overgrown by grasses.

3) The collection has not been well-documented or well-maintained. They recommend a change of management/administration at the Pavlovsk Experiment Station, and additional resources made available for maintenance and repropagation of the collection.

4) They recommend that the station be maintained. The 13 hectares where the fruit collections are currently planted must be maintained, an additional 20 hectares are needed to renew and re-propagate the collection while maintaining the original plantings. Additional areas that do not hold collections (e.g. a wetland) or are currently planted with field crops (grains or potatoes) are identified as unnecessary to protect and may be developed.

5) The commission recommends against moving the fruit collection, considered too risky (too great a risk of loss of accessions).

Clearly Pavlovsk needs to see some changes, and there is work to be done. Equally clearly, resources — which have been lacking for decades — will be needed. But the crucial point is that the fruit collections are worth maintaining, and not worth moving.

That’s a victory by any standards. Even if they are destroyed.

The story of the campaign is by now pretty well known, with large organizations orchestrating petitions and twitfests available to all and letters of support from academe. Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian President, responded with a tweet of his own, saying he had sent the issue for scrutiny. And presumably some of the more august letters of support got some attention too. Personally, I don’t think Pavlovsk is safe yet, but I do think the tide of opinion in the Russian government may be turning. And I also think that everybody who contributed in any way — from single tweets to that fabulous rapid translation of the press conference — can share in the success, so far.

1. But far better than my Russian, which is non-existent. I know, for a guy who seeks to channel Vavilov … that’s very lame. [↩]
2. Who might or might not have a professional interest in some of Pavlovsk’s holdings. In any event, thanks Mike. [↩]

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At the risk of being a spoilsport, and also because the truth does nothing to diminish the importance of the endangered collections in the field genebanks ^[1] at Pavlovsk Experiment Station, I am trying to clarify some aspects of the story that have become somewhat muddled. Today, the scientists who died protecting the seeds.

Many of the latest crop of reports about the threat to Pavlovsk bring up the poignant reminder that scientists “chose to starve to death rather than eat the stored grain at the Pavlovsk Experiment Station near St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad)”. ^[2] The point is usually to indicate how truly precious these collections of agricultural biodiversity were; saving them for the future is thus only right and proper, given that people gave their lives to save them during the Siege of Leningrad. That is a line of argument I do not want to question yet; I do want to question whether the scientists died at Pavlovsk.

Pavlovsk Experiment Station was just one of several field stations established or absorbed by Vavilov as he built up the All-Union Institute of Applied Botany and New Crops after becoming its director in 1926. The institute’s name indicates why he did so. To apply the science of genetic and breeding to improve Russian agriculture, by introducing new varieties and entirely new crops. The network of sites spread from the sub-tropical south to the polar north and right across Russia, and was very successful. Pavlovsk, just south of St Petersburg, was just one of these sites, specialising in fruit, potatoes, forages, and some cereals.

Each of these field stations had its own collections of diversity, stored both as plants and seeds, but one of their main tasks was growing out samples stored at the main genebank of the Vavilov Institute, which was at its headquarters on St Isaac Square in St Petersburg. As the siege began, some of the seeds from St Isaac Square were spirited away to Pavlovsk for safe-keeping, but by early 1942 the Germans were shelling the surrounding town of Pushkin and Pavlovsk’s holdings were in danger.

In a daring move, the caretakers of the seeds loaded the portion of the collections held in Pushkin onto twenty trucks, whose drivers managed to pass through the German lines pretending to be peasants delivering grain to other German troops. That convoy of seeds eventually arrived, undetected, at the University of Tartu Experimental Station in Estonia in the summer of 1942.

Gary Nabhan’s Where our food comes from goes on to describe how the staff at St Isaac Square continued to look after the seeds, barricaded inside the building to prevent hungry people in the streets outside from plundering the genebank. The potatoes, stored of course as tubers rather than seeds, were in a basement room where a small stove fed with anything that would burn kept them from freezing.

Numb with cold and stricken with hunger, the staff took shifts caretaking the seeds around the clock. Nine of Vavilov’s most dedicated coworkers slowly starved to death or died of disease rather than eat the seeds that were under their care.

When summer came, the staff planted cabbages and potatoes in the churchyard of St Isaac’s Cathedral and in the fields back at Pavlovsk, standing guard 24 hours a day to protect the potatoes from their hungry fellow citizens. Rats, whose population was no longer controlled by the cats, which had been eaten the previous winter, were a problem too. Vadim Lekhnovich, who survived, was asked was it hard not to eat some of the plants they were growing and guarding.

“It was hard to walk. It was unbearably hard to get up every morning, to move your hands and feet. … But it was not in the least difficult to refrain from eating up the collection. For it was impossible [to think of] eating it up. For what was involved was the cause of your life, the cause of your comrades’ lives.”

Nabhan recites the names of some of those who died:

Alexander Stchukin died at his writing table, holding in his hand a packet of his most prized peanuts that he had hoped to send off for a grow out. The custodian of Vavilov’s many oat collections, Liliya Rodina, died of starvation, as did Dimitry Ivanov, who as his own life failed, stowed away thousands of packets of rice. … There were others as well — Steheglov, Kovalevsky, Leonjevsky, Malygina, Korzun — some who perished by starving, some riddled by sickness, others by shrapnel. Wolf, the herbarium curator, was hit by a missile shell fragment, and bled to death. Gleiber, the archivist of Vavilov’s field notes, died in the midst of those papers rather than leave his post.”

There were undoubtedly others. That not all of them starved is irrelevant. That they were at the headquarters of the Institute in the middle of St Petersburg, rather than at Pavlovsk, is, I believe, relevant. Vavilov’s great achievement was to see the scope and promise of bringing genetic diversity together and using it to create varieties and new crops that could take advantage of Russia’s vast area with all its different climatic zones. To do that, he needed experimental field stations in all those climatic zones, and Pavlovsk was “just” one of those.

The value of the collections lies not in the past; if people had died to protect something worthless, that should not increase its worth today. It’s worth lies in the future, in meeting the challenges — unknowable but certain — that will arise. I do not wish to diminish the sacrifice of those scientists. Not for one instant. But their deaths, on St Isaac Square for the most part, are not the main reason that the collections at Pavlovsk, as elsewhere, need to be conserved.

Next week; just how unique is Pavlovsk?

1. Despite which, people who really ought to know better are still calling it the world’s first seed bank. [↩]
2. Quote singled out from here; there are lots of others to the same effect. [↩]

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