When penetrating into each country, we wanted to achieve as much as possible: to understand the ‘agricultural soul’ of that country and its conditions; to master its specific and varietal composition; and to gain the most use from this information while integrating it and the evolution of worldwide agriculture and plant breeding into a single unit. The geographical literature is extensive, but everybody observes different things depending on which filter the facts are strained through or how the investigator approaches them. It has been the true desire of the author to provide the reader with an opportunity for looking together with him at the enormous territory of remarkable areas in the world where magnificent agricultural civilizations originated, developed and still exist.
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Congratulations and thanks to those that have had this initiative.
I’m a lover of travelling literarture and I remeber reading “Five Continents” and enjoying Vavilov’s descriptive (photographic?) views on the countries visited, agricultural systems, traditional practices, etc., and, eagerly looking for the part of his notes concening Portugal, only to find out that very little about his visit reached our days. A good deal of Vavilov’s manuscripts were lost. Just imagine if Vavilov have had access to cybercafe and, daily, or almost daily, had the opportunity to send his notes over to someone else. Well… in those days that, today reality, was not even in the most wild minds, let alone at each corner in almost every place in the World.
Learning with Vavilov’s writings is a never ending experience.
@Eliseu Bettencourt -
Thank you; and congratulations on being the first to comment.