Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin: the best varieties of fruit and berry crops created by a great breeder. Michurin. The garden of his life under different regimes Remote hybridization in the works of Michurin

His father, Vladimir Michurin, came from low-income nobles. Several families of the Michurin noblemen lived in the Pronsky district, who owned small estates up to 50 acres of land near the villages of Alabino, Birkinovka and Yumashevo. Ivan was the seventh child in the family. He was born in a dilapidated and cramped forest hut. The poor situation was due to the fact that his parents were forced to leave a violent, nervously sick grandmother on his father's side, with whom life was unbearable for the whole family. Passing on his father's memories of his birth, Ivan Vladimirovich said: “That autumn, thanks to the early cold weather, was snowy and harsh. And the new stove, which my father had managed to put down in the hut the day before I was born, was still damp, not bleached. " Vladimir Ivanovich was educated at home and served for some time at the Tula Arms Factory as a receiver of weapons. Having married against the will of his parents to a girl of the "common class", he soon retired with the rank of provincial secretary and settled forever in his estate "Vershina" near the village of Dolgoe-Michurovka.

Ivan's brothers and sisters died in infancy, but Michurin himself was a healthy child and did not get sick at all in childhood. When the boy was 4 years old, his mother Maria Petrovna, who was in poor health, fell ill with a fever and died. Deprived of his mother's supervision, left to himself, Ivan spent most of his time in the garden and on the banks of the Prony River. Passionate love for nature and the desire to penetrate into its "secrets" sharply distinguished little Michurin from his peers: “Only I, as I remember myself, have always and entirely been absorbed in only one desire to grow certain plants for occupations, and such a passion was so strong that I hardly even noticed many other details of life; they all seemed to have passed me by and left almost no trace in my memory. "

Little Michurin was distinguished by his extraordinary observation and desire for knowledge. A rare document that has come down to descendants - a small diary dated 1869 - contains the notes of thirteen-year-old Michurin, who studied "the experience of meteorological predictions over 100 years from 1868 to 1968". The teenage meteorologist was interested not only in the phases of the planets and not the planets themselves, "which govern, as he wrote, these years," but the climate conditions, the nature of flowering, the size of the yield - these words flicker on the yellowed pages of his diary , which has lain for about eighty years.

The boy preferred to dig, plant, sow, collect fruits and seeds over ordinary children's games and entertainment. With an interest and observation uncharacteristic for a child, Ivan looked for seeds in the garden and vegetable garden that were the best in shape and color. He had entire collections of seeds. But he especially loved to tinker with sowing seeds of apple trees, plums and cherries. He collected them from the best in size and taste of fruits and berries.

Having lost his mother and averse to his grandmother, the boy began to live a working life early. Studying at home, and then at the Pronsk district school, he devoted all his leisure time to work in the garden. Even as a child, he perfectly mastered various methods of plant grafting. At the school Michurin stood out for his diligence and abilities. The development of his interest in plant growing was influenced by the fact that his father and aunt, Tatyana Ivanovna, devoted a lot of time to working in the garden. Of course, the rich natural conditions of the "Top" also influenced. Michurin's craving for nature was so strong that on Saturdays, without waiting for a carriage from the "Vershina", he went home on foot, even during floods. He knew every bush in the vicinity of the "Top", the first about the blooming of flowers, the ripening of berries and the appearance of mushrooms.

After Ivan graduated from the Pronskoe district school, his father paid for the preparation for entering the St. Petersburg Lyceum. But just at the time when young Michurin dreamed of higher education, trouble came. His father fell ill. Then it was discovered that the estate was mortgaged and should be used to pay debts. There was complete ruin. The family, which consisted of decrepit grandmother and aunts, fell apart. Deprived of his livelihood, his father settled with a peasant in Michurovka, and his son moved on to live with his aunt (paternal) Tatyana Ivanovna Michurina. She was an intelligent, energetic, well-educated and very empathetic woman. She always treated her nephew with exceptional attention and care. Her small estate in Birkinovka, where Michurin spent almost all his holidays during his school years, served as a school for intelligent work and a democratic way of thinking for him. He read and studied a lot.

At the same time, his aunt, Tatyana Ivanovna, ready to sacrifice everything for him, barely existed herself. His uncle, Lev Ivanovich, helped Ivan to decide Michurin in the Ryazan provincial gymnasium, otherwise he was indifferent to his sick brother and nephew. Having entered the gymnasium, Michurin did not study there for long. Soon he was expelled "for disrespect" to his superiors: when he greeted the director of the gymnasium on the street, Michurin, because of the severe frost and ear disease, did not take off his hat in front of him. But this incident was only a pretext. The real reason was that there was a quarrel between the uncle, Lev Ivanovich, and the director of the gymnasium, Oransky. Oransky demanded a bribe for accepting Michurin in the gymnasium, but Lev Ivanovich did not give it.

At the end of 1872, Ivan Michurin got a job as a commercial clerk in a commodity office at Kozlov station on the Ryazan-Ural railway (now Michurinsk station, Moscow-Ryazan railway) with a monthly salary of 12 rubles. In 1874 Michurin took the position of a commodity cashier, and then one of the assistants to the head of the same station. But this position, which was relatively well paid, he soon lost for a caustic mockery of the station master. Eternal poverty, monotonous work, rude shouts from the authorities, bribery of clerks and their drinking after a 16-hour working day - such was the situation in which Michurin was in those years.

While still working as an assistant to the station chief, Michurin met the daughter of a distillery worker, Alexandra Petrushina, whom he soon married. Responding to a request from the Department of Agriculture, Michurin wrote on November 10, 1911: “Married on August 28, 1874 to the petty bourgeoisie of the town of Kozlov, Alexandra Vasilyevna Petrushina, who was born in 1858. From this marriage I have two children: a son, Nikolai, born in 1876, and a daughter, Maria, born in 1877. " The marriage led Michurin to a final break with his relatives. And only aunt Tatyana Ivanovna still retained her affection and kept in touch with him constantly.

Michurin's wife, Alexandra Vasilievna, an energetic and hardworking woman, and her sister Anastasia Vasilievna, and later daughter Maria Ivanovna and niece of A.S. Platonkin's wife, made up Michurin's new family. They were excellent helpers of the great natural scientist and meekly shared with him the exhausting work and all the hardships of his then modest life. The financial situation of Ivan Vladimirovich and Alexandra Vasilievna at that time was the most deplorable. With the loss of Michurin's job as assistant to the station chief, the young spouses were in dire need, close to poverty. But it was here that Michurin's iron patience manifested itself. Already during these years Michurin began to think about the question of improving and replenishing the assortment of fruit plants in central and northern Russia. To set up experiments, he rented an empty city manor house with an area of ​​130 fathoms (about 500 square meters) "with a small part of a neglected garden" for 3 rubles a month.

The source of funds for the experimental work was the watch workshop, which Michurin opened. This empty manor was actually a dumping ground, and Michurin had to spend a lot of work preparing it for planting, but it was most dear to him. On this piece of land, a wonderful business of improving plants began. A vigorous, enthusiastic activity full of the most daring daring and bright hopes begins. Here "I spent," Michurin wrote 36 years later, "all my free hours in the office, spending on the purchase of plants and their seeds those insignificant savings that I tried to save from my salary from the office, often denying myself the most necessary expenses" ...

However, at first Michurin had to experience severe disappointment due to inexperience and lack of knowledge. “Given my then too superficial knowledge of the undertaken business,” he wrote many years later, “it seemed easy to do, but then, later, the whole burden of the work I had taken upon myself became clear. It took a deep study of both plant life in general and, in particular, the influence of different climatic and soil factors on different forms of the structure of the organism of each plant species ”.

Over the next years Michurin eagerly studied Russian and foreign literature on gardening. But in the books of that time, he did not find the answer to many questions that worried him. The period from 1877 to 1888 in Michurin's life was especially difficult. It was a period of hopeless poverty, hard work and moral turmoil associated with failures in the field of acclimatization of fruit plants. However, Ivan Vladimirovich continued to stubbornly fight the difficulties that stood in his way.

Renting and cultivating land, purchasing inventory and materials, continuously replenishing the Nursery with seeds and plants from different countries required a lot of money. Therefore, after returning from duty Michurin had to sit well after midnight, fixing watches and repairing various devices. Back in 1888 Michurin invented a sprayer "for indoor plants, greenhouses, greenhouses and for all kinds of crops both in greenhouses and in the open air." The editorial board of the Russian Gardening magazine published two articles by Michurin on this matter and recommended the sprayer to gardeners.

Michurin's neighbor on the estate, the head of the Kozlov locomotive repair shops, engineer S.A. Grundi, an influential person in the city and in transport, in view of the expected arrival of the head of the road to Kozlov, decided to electrify the station. (The most incredible rumors were wandering about electricity in the remote province at that time). Knowing about Michurin's passion and excellent knowledge in the field of electricity at that time, Grundi offered to help him light the station, promising good earnings. And Michurin not only drew up the first project for lighting the station using electric current, but also implemented it. The installation and repair of telegraph and telephone sets were for a long time the main source of funds for experimental work. From that time Michurin kept the joke for the rest of his life: "Many volts, but few amperes, which is the same thing: fast, but not a lot." He often repeated it in those cases when there was a lot of chatter, but little action.

As a result of tireless searches, Michurin collected a huge collection of more than 600 species of various fruit and berry plants, which settled the plot he leased from the homeowners of the Gorbunov brothers. "Soon the estate I rented," he wrote, "was so overflowing with plants that there was no longer any possibility of doing business on it."

The terrible tightness on the site threatened the termination of work and the death of some of the plants, and there was no money to purchase a new site. Not finding the strength to destroy some of the tested plants, Michurin tried to get out of this situation by making the plants even more dense. “Plant between trees and over a fence. Counting 4 vershoks for each plant, you can hold out for three years, ”he wrote in his diary. But these tricks did not help. The tightness was becoming unbearable. We need a more spacious area. Michurin decided to further reduce the family's expenses in order to save money on this for the purchase of land. From now on Michurin carefully took into account all expenses, thus protecting himself from any "rash" and "unnecessary" expenses.

Constant anxiety, sleepless nights, malnutrition, metal dust over the workbench in the workshop led to the fact that by the spring of 1880 Michurin showed serious signs of health problems. To improve his health, Michurin, taking a vacation and closing his workshop, moved with his family to the Gorelov mill, located far outside the city and adjacent to a luxurious oak grove called "Khorek", where there was only one residential building - the miller's house, which he rented out for the summer Michurin. Fresh air and sun quickly restored the health of Michurin, who now devoted all his time to observing plants and reading literature. Here, in his studies with plants, Michurin was the first to critically test the knowledge he had acquired from books on botany, taxonomy, morphology, anatomy and plant physiology.

Experience with fruit plants led him to the conclusion about the special importance of the roots, about the possibility of the influence of the rootstock on the scion and vice versa. Already in 1888, he published an article "On the influence of the wild variety on the quality of cherry fruit" in the journal "Bulletin of Horticulture, Fruit Growing and Horticulture". These thoughts subsequently developed into a coherent system of views and took the form of his mentoring methods and preliminary vegetative rapprochement.

At that time Michurin already had experience of intraspecific hybridization. The compilation of a herbarium of various plants and a botanical study of the structure of a flower led Michurin to develop special techniques in the technique of hybridization. In early autumn Michurin again moved to Kozlov, renting an apartment in the Lebedevs' house, on the same Moskovskaya Street. The house had an estate with a garden. According to Michurin's contemporary I.A. Gorbunov, two years later Michurin acquired this house with the help of the bank, along with the estate, but lack of funds and large debts forced him to immediately mortgage the land and the house for a period of 18 years. On this estate, the first Michurin varieties were bred: raspberry Commerce (seedling of Colossal Schaefer), Griot pear-shaped cherries, Small-leaved semi-dwarf, Fertile and interspecific hybrid cherry variety Krasa Severa (Vladimir early cherry x Winkler white cherry); the entire collection of plants from the Gorbunovs' estate was transferred here. But after a few years, this estate also turned out to be so overflowing with plants that there was no way to carry out experimental work on it.

In the early autumn of 1887 Michurin learned that the priest of the suburban settlement of Panskoye, Yastrebov, was selling a plot of land seven kilometers from the city near the settlement of Turmasovo, near the Kruch, on the banks of the Lesnoy Voronezh River. After inspecting this site, Michurin was very pleased with him, although out of 12.5 acres (about 13.5 hectares) of the site, only half could go into business, since the other half was under the river, cliff and bushes. Michurin had so little money that the transaction was delayed until February 1888. The whole autumn and most of the winter of 1887 and 1888 was spent in feverish raising of money with unbearable work, reaching the point of exhaustion. Having decided to do anything, Michurin sold all the planting material of the nursery, got into big debts on the mortgage of half of the land that had not yet been purchased. On May 26, 1888, the coveted purchase of land took place. But with incredible prudence and frugality, it ended with Michurin only having 7 rubles left. It was all the money "capital" on which he could count in founding the first breeding nursery in the history of Russian fruit growing. For many years he dreamed of leaving the service on the railway and taking up breeding, Michurin was forced to continue working as a fitter for another year.

Michurin transferred to the acquired plot the most valuable seedlings, which were in the city nursery, and founded a commercial nursery - in the future, the only source of funds for conducting an experimental business. All this was done by the personal labor of Michurin and his family members. They did not even have the opportunity to hire a cart to transport plants from the city site and carried them for 7 kilometers on their shoulders. With hard manual labor and a daily exhausting walk of 14 kilometers, on the table were vegetables, grown by him, "a tsybik of tea for 2 kopecks for a brew" and black bread. Ivan Vladimirovich himself, recalling that time, told how, during his belated return home, he often dined on one prison, that is, bread and onions, chopped into salt water. Under such conditions, there was nothing to think about building a dwelling on a new site, and the whole family lived in a hut for two seasons.

Five years have passed. On the site of the neglected wasteland, slender ridges of hybrid seedlings of apple, pear, plum, sweet cherry, cherries and berry groves were green. Apricots, peaches, grapes, a mulberry tree, an olive tree, and yellow cigarette tobacco, which first appeared in Kozlov, were also interspersed. In the very center of the site, a small house was built, immersed in greenery. It was a small barn-like structure. Michurin and his family lived here.

Ivan Vladimirovich, who had recently changed his railwayman's cap for a wide-brimmed hat, lived in his nursery; it seemed that his dream of an independent and secure life, dedicated to creative activity, was close to full realization. But this was only the outward side of the matter. Still, perhaps Michurin was never so worried. “Lacking at that time solid information about the selection of varieties of fruit plants,” Michurin wrote later in one of his articles, “I decided to personally test and study the Advantages of a possible large number of varieties, for which I ordered from many garden establishments in Russia, and partly from abroad over 600 different types and varieties of fruit and ornamental plants. But soon, as one would expect, the results of such a "collection" brought a lot of disappointments. Firstly, just by one external appearance, by the shapes of shoots and foliage, which had a sharp difference in trees of the same variety, but obtained from different places, there was full reason to suspect confusion, which later, in fact, was revealed; secondly, after the first winter, as it was especially harsh, it was necessary to exclude from the collection more than half of the total number of varieties, as they turned out to be absolutely unbearable. Then, after several warm winters - with a second onset of severe ones, the losses resumed, and only a tenth of the vast collection remained, and then, with a few exceptions, the most ordinary in taste Russian varieties of fruits. "

Since 1884 Michurin also worked on hybridization. So, he bred a beautiful interspecific hybrid cherry variety Krasa Severa; in the nursery there were also 10 thousand seedlings of wonderful varieties of cherries - Small-leaved semi-dwarf, Fertile and other varieties.

After the terrible devastation inflicted on the southern and Western European varieties by our "Russian winter", Michurin was finally convinced of the failure of the method he had tried to acclimatize old varieties by grafting and decided to continue his work on breeding varieties of fruit and berry plants in the most correct way, by artificial crossing and directed education hybrids. A meeting with the famous scientist gardener Dr. Betling (an ardent opponent of the acclimatization of fruit plants according to Grell's method) and his encouraging attitude to Michurin's plans finally approved the latter on the path of hybridization.

Disappointed in the acclimatization of old varieties by grafting rather than sowing seeds, Michurin began to engage in plant hybridization. But the wide organization of these works required new funds, and the unstable, contradictory capitalist market, despite the fact that Michurin resorted to free distribution of plants, cuttings and seeds to popularize his new varieties, prevented the sale of planting material grown in the nursery.

Michurin's life at the Turmasovskaya dacha in the early years, until the trading nursery, this now the only source of existence and experimental work, did not become widely known, so that he had to think first of all about a piece of bread for his family. But Ivan Vladimirovich did not lose heart. He had high hopes for the obvious benefits of his varieties. Even a year before the first release of seedlings for sale, Michurin, in the twelfth year of his breeding work, sent out to all parts of Russia “A complete illustrated (by Ivan Vladimirovich’s own drawings) price list for fruit, ornamental trees and shrubs, as well as fresh collection of seeds of fruit trees available in the garden institution of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin ". It is remarkable that this price list, which has nothing to do with the usual advertising catalogs of trading companies, carried the revolutionary views of the experimenter to the masses of gardeners and was, rather, an effective scientific guide than a price list. Each line of him breathed a new Michurin idea. It was based on the principles of all-round improvement of fruit plants.

Striving for the development of domestic gardening, Michurin used his catalogs as the most possible way for him during the tsarist era to promote his progressive, deeply patriotic ideas: cannot acclimatize by transferring ready-made plants, cuttings, cuttings, etc. And all attempts of this kind for the most part fail. It happens that such a variety will exist for a year or another, and sometimes for several years, but then, in the end, it dies. Every plant has the ability to change in its structure, adapting to a new environment only in the early stages of its existence, and this ability, manifested from the first days after germination from seeds to a greater extent, gradually weakens and completely disappears after the first two or three years of fruiting of a new variety. , after which the resulting fruit tree variety becomes so resistant to change, in the sense of endurance, that no way of acclimatization is almost inconceivable ... ".

Michurin's long-term struggle to create a new, improved assortment, a bold search for the most effective methods of breeding new varieties that are hardy to a harsh climate and combine this endurance with high quality fruits, led him, after a series of disappointments and mistakes, to the correct assessment of plant hybridization. In those years, this was a bold innovation. He worked out the question of distant hybridization. This idea of ​​crossing representatives of various species and even genera of plants originated in Michurin in the early 1890s. And if the question of hybridization as a method of breeding new varieties, in itself at that time caused almost universal mistrust and denial, then distant crosses were the most daring challenge to modern Michurin science and especially to those of its representatives who rejected Darwin and defended immutability of species, clericalism in science. By crossing plants, Ivan Vladimirovich obtained the most successful combination of positive traits in a hybrid precisely in those cases when the producers of this hybrid were geographically distant in their habitat and comparatively distant in relation to plant forms. Such hybrids were easier than others to adapt to the harsh conditions of central Russia, where Michurin lived and worked.

Fascinated by the prospects that opened up before him, Michurin made broad plans for hybridization work. But funds were needed to implement them. Michurin pinned great hopes on the income from the nursery. The autumn of 1893 came - the long-awaited time for the first release of seedlings grown in the nursery. Ivan Vladimirovich was firmly convinced that his price lists and articles in magazines, in which he invested ideas that broke the age-old routine in gardening, will bear fruit. He hoped there would be many orders. But a severe disappointment awaited him. There were almost no orders. In a vain hope for the sale and revenue of money Michurin spent his last funds on newspaper and magazine advertisements, sent through his acquaintances who went to fairs and auctions, catalogs for distribution among the population and merchants. But in the early years he was stubbornly pursued by incomprehension and murderous indifference on the part of inexperienced gardeners, mistrust and contemptuous ridicule of the authorities of gardening. Michurin had to defend the existence of his business, to be sophisticated in his search for funds. During these years he thought hard about the possibility of introducing hardy varieties of apricot and peach into the orchards of the north. He had high hopes for his new bean / Chinese almond (Amygdalus Davidiana) hybrid, which he named the Mediator almond and which he subsequently crossed with a peach. "Give me at least one hardy species of Amygdalus," he said then, "which can be hybridized with a peach, and I can guarantee you that I will bring out a peach that can winter in central Russia."

In the period from 1893 to 1896, when the Michurin nursery already had thousands of hybrid seedlings of plum, sweet cherry, apricot and grapes, Michurin came up with a new idea that led to large and important consequences in his work. He found that the soil of the nursery, which is a powerful black soil, was too oily and "spoiled" the hybrids, making them less cold-resistant. For Michurin, this meant the elimination of the Turmasovsky plot, the ruthless destruction of all hybrids dubious in their cold resistance and the search for a new, more suitable plot of land. I had to start almost all the work anew to create the nursery. With all Michurin's meager budget, it was necessary, at the expense of new hardships, to find funds. A failure with the Turmasovsky site would have broken a less persistent nature, but Ivan Vladimirovich found in himself enough strength and determination to start a new stage of his research work. He perceived the experience of past years as irrefutable proof of the enormous influence exerted by climatic and soil conditions on the formation of a new plant organism, a new variety and its qualities. Michurin decided to change the location of his green laboratory and break with the Turmasovsky area.

After a long search, he found in the vicinity of Kozlov, in the valley of the Lesnaya Voronezh River, a piece of abandoned land with an area of ​​12 acres. This land, which belonged to the landowner Agapov and the official Rulev, was a thin, washed-out sediment, abounding in streams, channels, swamps and ravines. Half of this plot was completely unsuitable. In the land survey plan of the Tambov provincial land surveyor Popov, drawn up in 1899, it was said about him: "In the aforementioned participation of the settlement was not, and the land lay in vain." The soil was suitable for the Spartan regime of raising hybrids. But during the flood, which was especially stormy here, the area was completely covered with water, and, with a fast current, even mature trees were washed out in low places. However, there was no more suitable and cheaper land, and Michurin decided to move his nursery here. At the very bend of the river, the right bank was a flat area. This was the only place that, when constructing an embankment, could go under buildings. Ivan Vladimirovich planned to locate the mother nursery and fruit school (commercial nursery) lower, in a floodplain, and to weaken the current in years of especially high water rise, the entire site was surrounded by a deep ditch and protected by rapidly growing rocks.

Having sold the land in 1899 and demolished his house, Michurin and his family moved to the Donskoye settlement for the winter, and spent the summer of 1900, while the new house was being built, in a hastily put together barn. To the great chagrin of Ivan Vladimirovich, the transfer of the nursery to a new location ended in the loss of a significant part of the remarkable collection of original forms and hybrids. But he bravely endured it. His assumption about the need for Spartan education of hybrids this time was fully justified. Subsequently, he wrote: "When raising seedlings under a harsh regime, on lean soil, although a smaller number of them were with cultural qualities, but they were quite resistant to frost." Thus, Michurin found what he had been looking for for many years. In the future, it was this site that became the main department of the Central Genetic Laboratory named after him. And Michurin himself worked here until the end of his life.

Inspired by the first successes and prospects for improving his financial situation, Michurin, discarding considerations of personal well-being, tied himself with all the threads of his activities to the interests of the people. Improving the assortment of fruit plants in central Russia, Michurin set the task of his life to promote fruit growing in new areas with harsh climatic conditions. In particular, he worked with such southern plants as winter pear, sweet cherry, rennet, apricot, grape and peach. He carried out painstaking long-term work on the directed education of hundreds of his hybrids.

Michurin ended his famous work of varieties of fruit trees "Breeding new cultivated and shrubs from seeds", published in 32 issues of the journal "Progressive horticulture and horticulture" in 1911, with the words of fervent patriotism and wise scientific foresight: "I find it necessary to warn Russian gardeners against the traditional hobby all foreign, including various theories of breeding new varieties of fruit plants in Western Europe or America. No matter how clever these theories are, no matter how talented the gardeners of these countries are, they cannot help us in our business; not in the results of their labors is the center of gravity of our success, because in breeding new varieties of plants, more than in any other, it is impossible to apply methods developed under completely different, in comparison with ours, climate conditions. We need to awaken our own forces to intensified activity, we need to take a closer look at the climatic and other conditions of our localities, we need to thoroughly study their features. And only then will it become quite obvious to any Russian leader that almost everything foreign in this grandfather is completely inapplicable to us. "

In 1905 Michurin was 50 years old. By this time, Michurin had already bred a number of outstanding apple varieties: Antonovka one and a half pounds, Kandil-Kitayka, Renet bergamotny, Paradox, Northern autumn saffron; pears: Bere winter Michurina, Bere victory, Bergamot Novik, Sugar surrogate; plum: Renklode reform, Terne sweet; grapes: Northern white, Northern black and other varieties. This new assortment, although still in an insignificant size, nevertheless spread throughout Russia. However, official science stubbornly refused to recognize Michurin.

Fearing the destruction of his entire business, driven to despair by the surrounding environment, Michurin tried to resort to state assistance. This idea was given to him and insisted on its implementation by the Tambov provincial inspector of agriculture Marfin. Michurin hesitated for a long time and only Marfin's persistent admonitions made him decide to take this step. Ivan Vladimirovich understood perfectly well that with the receipt of a subsidy from the tsarist government, independence would have to be said goodbye. Template and routine will weigh on the original methods. The sharp internal struggle that Michurin was going through at that time is evidenced by the preserved record of Ivan Vladimirovich: “Every penny of such a subsidy will crush with its accuracy, will care about its best use. It's unbearable". But the work to which Michurin devoted his whole life required support, and the continuation of the record speaks of the decision taken: “The initial experiments, which were not so expensive, are over. Now, for the final elucidation of the properties of new varieties and new methods of breeding, already large funds are required. "

And so, on November 15, 1905, Michurin sent a report with Marfin to the Department of Agriculture, in which he tried to "clarify the importance and necessity of improving and replenishing the assortment of fruit plants" and suggested establishing a gardening school at the nursery. The idea of ​​such a special school for the continuation of his work and for the further development of breeding methods had long been occupied by Michurin. His memorandum traveled for a long time through the bureaucratic stages of the state machine of monarchist Russia, and the first result of this was the "release" of the liberal-minded Marfin from the duties of an agricultural inspector in the Tambov province. He was accused of persistence and "impudent" accusations of "blindness" made to high officials of the department. Michurin, on the other hand, received an answer from the director of the department, Kryukov, only on February 14, 1908, that is, after 2 years and 3 months. This answer was a model of inertia and. the soullessness of the tsarist officials. Here is an excerpt from it: “From the memorandum you submitted on November 15, 1905, from the reviews of specialists and from the periodical agricultural press, the Department of Agriculture had the opportunity to familiarize itself with your gardening experiments and appreciated their useful value. Providing, in rare exceptional cases, allowances to individuals for the continuation of their experiments in gardening and fruit growing, the Department of Agriculture would find it possible to use your experience and knowledge if you recognized it this area. " But Michurin flatly refused to carry out the "orders" of the department. He did not want to become an obedient official.

Unrecognized, exhausted by the struggle and loneliness, crushed by need, Michurin, nevertheless, continued to fight. Michurin, in his desire to save the case and organize a selection station on the basis of his achievements, on June 12, 1908 and October 26, 1910, again turned to the Department of Agriculture with reports. However, these were not humiliated requests of a man downtrodden by fate. In these documents, he acted as an exposer of the order that existed in tsarist Russia and an ardent patriot of the progressive ideas of Russian leaders. Offended by the bold speeches of the "daring upstart", department officials buried Michurin's reports in a bureaucratic sea of ​​papers. Grieved by the failure, deprived of the opportunity to cope with the forces of one family with many cases, Michurin watched with horror as the nursery, created at the cost of incredible hardships and labor, came to desolation. No one was interested in the fate of the lonely explorer at that time. And Michurin, summing up the results of his activities in the big work "Breeding new cultivars of fruit trees and shrubs from seeds", no longer creating any more illusions for himself and not pinning hopes on the tsarist government, with undisguised hatred of the exploiting tsarist capitalist system, wrote tragic lines : “For 33 years I had to pore over patches of miserable land, denying myself the essentials, I had to tremble for every penny spent on business, trying to return, as soon as possible, to knock out this penny, so that next year there would be an opportunity to educate at least some with a sin in half, another dozen seedlings, sometimes destroying, reluctantly, valuable specimens only because there is no free space for other plants ... And what, as a result of 33 years of labor, after breeding many, apparently, valuable new varieties of fruit plants - almost zero attention from society and even less from the government ... There is nothing to do, this in Russia for useful deeds and you will never wait. And so, in the end, the business dies, the nursery is launched, two-thirds of the new varieties are partly lost, lost due to lack of proper care, lack of free space, and partly scattered to various buyers in Russia and abroad, from where they will return to us under another name. Energy and health have weakened, and by will not by will it is necessary to part with what you love, and although gradually (because many plants are only entering the time of fruiting), but completely eliminate the matter ... ".

Meanwhile, Michurin's growing popularity abroad and mainly in the USA could not escape the attention of the tsarist officials. The plight in which he was found was too striking. It was a matter of prestige, and something urgently needed to be done. And the tsarist government, which pursued a carrot-and-stick policy towards "restless" scientists, tried to win Michurin to its side: as a "carrot" Ivan Vladimirovich was presented with the cross of "St. Anne" and at the same time the "whip" was launched that is, intimidation. In the summer of 1912, after receiving the notorious cross, the official Salov unexpectedly came to Michurin from St. Petersburg. “His Excellency,” as Ivan Vladimirovich himself said, did not even think to be interested in the nature of Michurin's works. Without going into the nursery, he limited himself to reviewing his plan, but he said a lot to Michurin that was insulting and humiliating for the great Russian biologist. The eloquent nobleman did not say a word about the establishment of a kindergarten school on the basis of Michurin's achievements and about material assistance. This was the end of the visit. A striking document characterizing the state of the Michurin case and the attitude of the government and society towards it is a report written by Ivan Vladimirovich at the beginning of the summer of 1912 to the Kaluga department of the Russian gardening society, of which he was an honorary member. In this report Michurin wrote: “Several times I wrote reports to our Russian Department of Agriculture on the urgent need to establish such an institution in which they would be engaged in a special brood of new varieties of fruit and berry plants of the best quality. He offered his knowledge, obtained by 35 years of work, but everything turns out to be in vain. You see, they have neither money nor desire for this subject, and besides, in addition, they need to start a business not with knowledge and experience, but with a diploma of non-existent science, brooding of new varieties of plants ... And as a result, useful business cannot be realized, but meanwhile, how much Russian gardening is losing from this! .. In view of the complete indifference of both the government and society, I gradually stop breeding new varieties of fruit plants and due to lack of care the nursery falls into desolation. I'm tired of pounding water for 35 years. " Meanwhile, the tsarist department of agriculture in the period from 1911 to 1913 gave full opportunity to the American botanist Professor Meyer to take to the United States a collection of Michurin varieties, which began to be cultivated there under American names. Outraged by the impudence of the Americans and the roguishness of the tsarist officials, who gave them the priority of Russian science and squandered Russian national wealth, Michurin wrote in his letter to the editor of the journal Gardener and Gardener S.V. Krainsky on June 4, 1913: “But what is most incomprehensible, so this is the inexplicable stubbornness of Russian industrial nurseries, which consists in their complete indifference to new varieties. Meanwhile, the Americans ... come several thousand miles away and take away from under the Russians' noses the best new varieties of plants to replenish their assortments, and our dyunduk can only open their mouths ... ”.

In 1911-1913, David Ferchild, the head of the introduction department of the US Department of Agriculture, made tremendous efforts to buy the entire collection of original forms and hybrids from Michurin. But Michurin flatly refused to sell his plantations, as he considered them the property of his homeland. Michurin believed that horticulture is the business of a whole people, that after field cultivation it is "one of the most beneficial occupations for the health of the population, in the most productive in terms of profitability." Ferchild, in a letter dated December 2, 1913, asked Michurin to become a member of the Breeders Society of American Breeders. Ferchild wrote: “I also wish you to become a member of our society because I feel how you can help us in our work to create and improve varieties of plants and animal breeds ... The art of breeding is not limited by any political or geographical barriers, and the magazine American breeders intend to provide an overview of the most interesting and characteristic aspects of the development of breeding around the world. "

In fact, it always turned out that political and geographical barriers did not exist only when the Americans took away new Michurin varieties and all kinds of discoveries and achievements of Russian scientific thought. Michurin, on the other hand, had not been able to get the fruits of the South Dakot chestnut (Castnea dentata L.) from the USA for 10 years. Rotten fruits were always sent to him. I could not get Michurin and seedlings of the West Virginia apple-tree. Golden excellent. Instead, the Americans sent the wild and, moreover, unstable apple tree Grimes golden.

On January 18, 1913 Michurin received a letter from the vice-president of the Horticultural Society and editor of the journal "Bulletin of Horticulture, Fruit Growing and Horticulture" A.A. Yachevsky, who, sympathizing with Michurin's ideas, sought to alleviate his financial situation.

Yachevsky wrote: “Dear Ivan Vladimirovich! I consider it a pleasant duty to inform you that at the Extraordinary Meeting of the Horticultural Society you were elected an honorary member of this Society, as a modest testimony to our respect for your many years of activity. I thought and consulted a lot about your letter; You, of course, cannot doubt my ardent desire to assist you, your works are so valuable for Russia that they deserve all kinds of support. I have said this more than once to many, but we like to admire the Americans, but they do not recognize their own, or at least do not want to notice. It is unlikely that the department will go to the issuance of an annual subsidy, but it may be possible to receive from it a one-time grant for the development of your garden - but this requires a description of your garden and the work performed in it. Perhaps you will agree to send me such a description (with photographs), which, by the way, I would publish in the "Bulletin" with your permission. With complete respect, A. Yachevsky. " This letter once again emphasized the complete powerlessness of individual people to change anything in the fate of Michurin and his case.

On February 5, 1913, Ivan Vladimirovich sent Yachevsky the following reply: “Dear Artur Arturovich! I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you, as the initiator, and to all the members of the Meeting of the Society for such flattering sympathy for me for my work, which was expressed in my election as an honorary member of the Horticultural Society. For my part, I will try, whenever possible, to bring my feasible contribution of labor to the benefit of the cause of the respected Society. With regard to your proposal to send photographs of the cultures of my nursery and a description of them, I must say that I have never set myself the goal of trimming the ostentatious side of the cultures and therefore do not have such photographs. Yes, in fact, and could not have, because for this it would have to conduct business in a way that is not the case with me. This would have required significantly higher costs, which would have been beyond my means. It is impossible to find funds for such secondary needs of the case when they are not enough to carry out the most necessary actions in the case. For example, I am unable to transfer a nursery from a completely depleted soil to a new plot of land. All the plants have grown so thick that they drown out each other and, of course, die from this; everything is overgrown with weeds so that sometimes it is difficult to find any valuable specimen of a new plant variety ... To bother, as you write, about a one-time subsidy from your Department ... to support the brood of new plant varieties, the game is positively not worth the candle .. If one could expect ... a large amount of subsidy that could really make it possible to conduct the case in the proper form - it would be a different matter, otherwise, most likely, they will give some several hundred rubles, which would be a shame to accept, yes and they cannot bring substantial benefit to the cause, but meanwhile, at the same time, you will have to assume the extremely undesirable dependence and ... reporting obligations, etc. in such cases. In the past decade, I wrote to the Department several times my reports on this case Of course, I never asked for subsidies, I just wanted to draw the attention of the Department to the colossal importance of the brood of new varieties of fruit plants and the need to improve them qualitatively. but, as you can see, all my efforts were completely in vain, and absolutely no sense came out of my reports. Now they are opening breeding stations, but they have not prepared people for successful work in them, there, in my opinion, the diplomas of our gardening institutions will not help the business, because people with great personal experience and vocation are needed, and not with a diploma. .. If you wish, I have nothing against this letter of mine being read in the Meeting of the Society. With sincere deep respect ... I. Michurin. "

Michurin was deeply aware of the hopelessness of his situation. Less than a year later, in his autobiography, written by him at the request of the editor of the "Gardener" magazine (published by the Gardening Society in Rostov-on-Don) G.Kh. councils of eminent horticultural figures, sent reports to our department of agriculture, in which he tried to clarify the importance and necessity of improving and replenishing our assortments of fruit plants by breeding their local varieties from seeds, but nothing came of these reports. Finally, now it is too late, and the years have passed and the strength is depleted ... greatly disturbed health and loss of strength are already making themselves felt quite persistently. "

The world imperialist war broke out. Michurin's commercial nursery worked poorly. Ivan Vladimirovich, exhausted, was no longer able to make ends meet. And the next year, 1915, brought him another great misfortune, which almost completely destroyed all hopes for further research work. In early spring, the raging river overflowed its banks and flooded the nursery. The subsequent severe frosts and a rapid decline in water buried the entire school of two-year-olds under ice debris. This killed many valuable hybrids. The first blow was followed by a second, even more terrible. In the summer, a cholera epidemic raged in Kozlov, from which Michurin's wife, Alexandra Vasilievna, died. Tempered by difficult life trials, carried away by an inextinguishable passion for new discoveries for the benefit of working mankind, Michurin, remaining completely alone, steadfastly endured the grief that had befallen him and, despite the need, did not retreat from his difficult path as a natural scientist.

The years passed. A lonely old age was approaching. It seemed that all his great work was threatened with inevitable death. However Michurin was always full of faith in the righteousness and immortality of his work, never lost his sense of time, did not fall into pessimism. And he was not deceived. Having never left his nursery during the entire period of the February Revolution, Michurin appeared at the newly organized county land commissariat and said: "I want to work for the new government." From that moment on, a new era, brilliant in its results, began in Michurin's life and work. On the same day, a meeting of the board was convened, and the land committee of the Donskoy Sloboda immediately took measures to protect Michurin's nursery, and Ivan Vladimirovich and his family received the necessary material assistance. Interesting documents from that time have survived. On July 18, 1918, when Michurin worked on funds received from the Soviet state, and when the case for the nationalization of the nursery was being formalized, they wrote to Michurin from the land department: the agronomic department asks you, Ivan Vladimirovich, to calmly continue your work, which is extremely useful for the homeland. "

After the nursery was studied, the board of the Kozlovsky district commissariat of agriculture in its meeting of June 29, 1918, decided: “Due to the fact that Michurin's fruit nursery at the Donskoy Sloboda in the amount of 9 dess. according to the documentary information available in the commissariat, it is the only one in Russia to brood new varieties of fruit plants ... recognize the nursery as inviolable, leaving it temporarily under the jurisdiction of the Central Committee (Narkomzem) for the county commissariat, of which notify the relevant volost and local councils, provide Michurin with the right to use the nursery in the amount of 9 dess. and ask to continue the work useful for the state at its own discretion. For the production of work to issue an allowance in the amount of 3,000 rubles, at the same time inform the Moscow Commissariat of Agriculture about the decision that has taken place with a request to take the said nursery into its own jurisdiction and under its leadership. "

On November 18, 1918, the People's Commissariat of Agriculture took over the nursery and approved Michurin as head, with the right to invite an assistant and the necessary staff at his discretion for a wider setting of the case. For the first time, the state provided Michurin with personnel, funds, materials, everything necessary, and he takes up tenfold energy to expand his scientific work. The number of experiments in his garden increased to several hundred. At the same time, Ivan Vladimirovich took an active part in the work of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture to create a new Soviet agronomy, advised on breeding, drought control, raising yields, and attended local agronomic meetings. He called on the country's fruit growers to follow his example, warned that "young Soviet fruit growers will face many, thorns, disappointments, but any new discovery will serve as the greatest reward and the greatest honor in the country of working people." “Fruit will act correctly when they follow my constant rule: we cannot wait for favors from nature; it is our task to take them from her, "Michurin said and wrote more than once.

In 1920 Michurin invited I.S. Gorshkov to work as a senior assistant, who was working at that time in Kozlov as a district gardening specialist, who began expanding the base for Ivan Vladimirovich's experimental work. With the support of local authorities, in January 1921 Gorshkov organized a branch of the nursery on the lands of the former Trinity Monastery. By this time, Ivan Vladimirovich had developed over 150 new hybrid varieties. In 1921, at the county exhibition organized by Gorshkov, Michurin's achievements were widely demonstrated for the first time: his apples, winter pears, plums and grapes. Michurin's nursery attracted thousands of Soviet farmers, representatives of state farms, agricultural artels and communes.

The year 1922 was marked for Michurin by an event that had a decisive influence on the further development of his business. On February 18, 1922, the Tambov Provincial Executive Committee received a telegram from the Council of People's Commissars as follows: “Experiments in obtaining new cultivated plants are of tremendous state importance. Urgently send a report on the experiments and work of Michurin of the Kozlovsky district for a report to the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, comrade. Lenin. Confirm the execution of the telegram. "

In the late summer of 1922, Mikhail Kalinin visited Michurin. He talked with Ivan Vladimirovich for a long time and got to know the nursery thoroughly. After his visit, he sent Michurin a parcel and a letter in which he wrote: “Dear Ivan Vladimirovich, as a reminder of myself, I am sending you a small parcel. Do not mistake it for an act of grace on the part of the person in power. It's just my sincere desire to somehow emphasize respect and sympathy for you and your work. With sincere greetings, M. Kalinin. " On January 26, 1923, on Michurin's memorandum on the issue of the release of funds for the further expansion of the nursery's work, Kalinin wrote to the People's Commissar of Agriculture that this matter should be carried out as urgently as possible.

Local party and Soviet organizations rendered great assistance in strengthening the financial situation of the nursery. So, for example, in addition to the funds allocated by the center, the Tambov provincial economic meeting on March 19, 1923 assigned to the nursery 5 best gardens and land plots with a total area of ​​915 acres.

In 1923, the first All-Union Agricultural Exhibition was organized in Moscow. Michurin with great joy and love prepared with I.S. Gorshkov for the all-Union display of his achievements. Wonderful plants, wonderful fruits and berries, rich assortment created by Michurin - all this made a great impression on the participants and visitors of the exhibition. The expert commission awarded Michurin the highest award.

IV Michurin and Professor NI Kichunov, 1927.

Following this, in November 1923, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR issued a decree recognizing the nursery as an institution of national importance, noting that it had moved to one of the first places among the research institutions of the Union. Michurin's name has gained a solid and well-deserved popularity among scientists, gardening specialists and among ordinary people. On October 25, 1925, in Kozlov, by decision of the central and local party, Soviet and public organizations, the 50th anniversary of Michurin's activity was solemnly celebrated. For his outstanding half-century work on breeding new and improved varieties of fruit and berry plants, Michurin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor by the Central Executive Committee of the USSR with the appointment of a life pension.

In connection with the general growth of the material base and the number of scientific workers, the nursery has dramatically increased the scale of research work. The number of combinations in crosses reached 800, and the number of crosses up to 100 thousand. Both branches of the nursery already had vast areas with 30 thousand new hybrids bred by Michurin and his assistants during the Soviet period of activity. By this time, five new collection uterine orchards (seed, stone, berry) with continuous plantings of Michurin varieties were laid.

In 1927 the film "South in Tambov" was released. He promoted the successes of Soviet breeding thought and popularized Michurin's methods and achievements. The film was a great success both in the USSR and abroad. And in 1928 the Michurinsky nursery was renamed into the I.V. Michurin Plant Selection and Genetic Station for Fruit and Berry Crops. By this time, the station was already the largest center for scientific fruit growing.

I.V. Michurin and academician B.A. Keller, 1928.

From 1921 to 1935, experimental stations, agricultural educational institutions, state and public organizations, collective and state farms and collective farmers-experienced workers, in total 3 058 addresses in the USSR, were released Michurin seedlings 1 267 thousand pieces and grafting material for budding 2.5 million wild birds. In the fall of 1929, Soviet power fulfilled Michurin's old dream. In Kozlov, the country's first technical school for the selection of fruit and berry crops was opened, which was named after Michurin himself. And shortly before that, the publishing house "Novaya Derevnya" published the first volume of Michurin's works "The Results of Half a Century Works", highlighting the methodology of his breeding work.

On February 20, 1930, Michurin was visited by Kalinin for the second time. He got acquainted in detail with the latest works and achievements, carefully asked Michurin about health, about the needs of state importance, work in this area awarded him the Order of Lenin. The plenum filed a petition with the Presidium of the USSR Central Executive Committee to rename the city of Kozlov to Michurinsk. This petition was granted by the government on May 18, 1932.

The most important thing for consolidating the results of Michurin's work was at that time the creation of large arrays of nurseries of Michurin varieties. The government provided Ivan Vladimirovich with all possible support in this. Within two years, next to a small plot of Michurin, a state farm grew on an area of ​​several thousand hectares. Over the next years Michurin worked hard on the problem of accelerating fruiting. The People's Commissars of the USSR and the RSFSR and the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences named after Lenin adopted on October 3, 1931, a decision to organize, on the basis of Michurin's achievements, a number of institutions of all-Union significance, a production training and experimental plant, consisting of: a state farm-garden on an area of ​​over 3,500 hectares, the Central Research Institute northern fruit growing, the Institute of Fruit and Vegetable Economy, the Institute of Postgraduate Studies, a technical school, a workers' faculty, a children's agricultural station and an experimental school.

During this period, the selection and genetic station of fruit and berry crops has grown enormously. Its equipment includes the most advanced instruments and apparatus. And the city of Michurinsk since 1931 has become the largest center for research and industrial gardening.

Despite his age, Michurin continued to work intensively. At 5 o'clock in the morning Michurin was always on his feet. Until 8 o'clock he worked in the nursery: he was checking the work carried out the day before, grafting, sowing, observing the formation of hybrids. At 8 am he drank tea, and until 12 pm he worked again in the nursery. Here he was engaged in a wide variety of hybridization work and trained workers. He never parted with his notebook, where he entered all his observations and remarks, research topics. In the garden, somewhere on a bench, under a tree, he received visitors. In the hardest time of hybridization, usually carried out between 10-12 o'clock in the afternoon, Michurin could always be found somewhere in the sun with his small camping laboratory. In a small cabinet he had dozens of jars of plant pollen, magnifiers, a magnet, tweezers, syringes, pruners, knives and all kinds of files, in a word, a wide variety of devices and tools. Mail arrives at half past eleven; Ivan Vladimirovich immediately glanced through it and, after putting the letters in the pockets of his jacket, went off to dinner. At 12 o'clock lunch began, which took half an hour.

After lunch Michurin spent an hour and a half reading newspapers and special periodicals - magazines, bulletins, collections - and an hour on rest. Correspondence was postponed until the evening. From 3 to 5 pm, work continued in the nursery, greenhouse or room, depending on the circumstances and the weather. At 5 pm he drank tea, after which Michurin worked in the room on diaries, articles, books in his specialty. During these hours, he often received late visitors from afar. At 8 o'clock in the evening there was dinner, it took 20 minutes. After having a bite, Ivan Vladimirovich took up the correspondence, and so he worked until 12 o'clock in the morning. Until 1924, he conducted all correspondence himself. Michurin's long working day ended at midnight.

Michurin valued his time very much; moreover, material insecurity did not allow him to undertake trips. But he gladly received business people, especially serious specialists. Michurin knew how to condense his time to the extreme. The scope of Ivan Vladimirovich's work was truly colossal. In his autobiography, he wrote: “Tens of thousands of experiments have passed through my hands. I have grown a lot of new varieties of fruit plants, from which several hundred new varieties have emerged, suitable for cultivation in our gardens, and many of them are in no way inferior in quality to the best foreign varieties. "

The Soviet period of Michurin's activity is rich in major achievements. At the end of 1918, when his nursery was taken over by the RSFSR People's Commissariat for Agriculture, there were 154 new varieties bred by Michurin. By 1935, in the expanded nursery, the number of new varieties, including those being tested, had already exceeded 300. Besides them, the nursery had more than 125 thousand hybrids, of which new, valuable varieties are annually allocated. “At the present time,” wrote Michurin on the eve of his sixtieth birthday in 1934, “the assortment I have developed already includes over 300 new varieties and represents a serious basis for the socialist reconstruction of the fruit and berry industry not only in the European, but also in the Asian part of the USSR, in the high mountainous regions of the Caucasus (Dagestan, Armenia) ”.

On September 20, 1934, the 80th anniversary of Michurin's life and the 60th anniversary of Michurin's creative activity were celebrated. On the day of the anniversary, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee awarded Michurin the title of Honored Worker of Science and Technology.

Throughout most of the winter of 1934 and 1935, despite the indisposition, Michurin worked without violating the regime established for decades. As always, his assistants came to him twice a day, and his closest employees were always with him. He continued to correspond with all the breeder friends. Michurin devoted a few free hours to reading fiction. He did not abandon his work at the workbench, but his main attention was given to the development of gardening in the country.

Forgetting about his illness, Ivan Vladimirovich, four months before his death, wrote: “In the person of the collective farmer, the history of agriculture of all times and peoples has a completely new figure of a farmer who entered the struggle with the elements with wonderful technical weapons, influencing nature with the view of a transformer. This completely new type of farmer was born of Marxism, brought up and put on its feet by the Bolshevism of Lenin and Stalin. Acting on the arena of history as the younger brother and ally of the main figure of the new system - the worker, the collective farmer naturally arouses exceptional interest in how he will be and how he should influence nature ... Therefore, every collective farmer must be an experienced worker, and an experienced worker already exists converter. Life has become different - full of the meaning of existence, interesting, joyful. Therefore, both the plant and the animal must be more productive, more resilient, more responsive to the needs of this new life. And this is possible only on the basis of omnipotent technology and omnipotent selection. "

At the beginning of March 1935, the Second All-Russian Conference on Fruit Growing took place in Michurinsk. Not being able to personally attend it, Michurin, nevertheless, took an active part in its work. He gave instructions to the leaders of the meeting, received the delegations of the Crimea, Dagestan, Transcaucasia, Belarus, Bashkiria and explained how to start experiments, acquainted the participants of the meeting with his methods, recommended rootstocks and assortments.

Michurin's instructions on the development of citrus culture were extremely valuable. A detailed acquaintance of the delegation of the Transcaucasian Komsomol (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ajaristan, Abkhazia) with Michurin's works and methods, his speeches in the magazine "Soviet Subtropics" on the development of new, more cold-resistant varieties of lemon, orange, mandarin, the introduction of his breeding technique - all this played a great role in the development of the mass experimental movement in the Transcaucasus.

During his sixty years of activity Michurin wrote tens of thousands of letters, he was one of those scientists for whom practice, the verification of scientific provisions by experience was the rule of life.

Monument to Ivan Michurin. Installed in 1954 in Michurinsky Garden at the All-Russian Exhibition Center (VDNKh) in Moscow.

Ivan Michurin died on June 7, 1935 and was buried on the square of the city of Michurinsk. At the moment, his grave is located on the territory of the collection nursery of Michurinsk State Agrarian University.

The text was prepared by Tatiana Khalina

Used materials:

Vavilov N.I., In memory of Michurin, in the collection: I. V. Michurin in the memoirs of contemporaries, Tambov, 1963; Nesterov Ya.S., I.V. Michurin - the founder of scientific breeding of fruit and berry crops, in the book: Achievements of domestic breeding, M., 1967 .; I.V. Michurin. Works in four volumes. Gosselkhozizdat. M. 1948.

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Michurin Ivan Vladimirovich - Russian breeder, gardener - geneticist, author of many varieties of fruit and berry crops, honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1935), academician of VASKHNIL (1935), awarded the Orders of Lenin (1931) and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, three lifetime editions of collected works.

Michurin was born on October 27 (15), 1855 on the estate of a retired military official in the Ryazan province. He continued the family tradition, since not only his father, Vladimir Ivanovich, but also his grandfather, Ivan Ivanovich, as well as his great-grandfather, Ivan Naumovich, were interested in gardening and collected a rich collection of fruit trees and a library of agricultural literature.

At one time he did not graduate from high school, he served as a clerk at a railway station, a mechanic - a handicraftsman. He also did not receive a special agronomic education, he reached everything himself. In 1875 he rented an orchard and started breeding - the creation of new varieties of fruit and berry and ornamental crops. He bred more than 300 new varieties of fruit and berry plants, experiments on distant hybridization (crossing of species that are not related to each other) were especially successful. In 1918, the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the RSFSR expropriated Michurin's nursery, appointing him head. In 1928, a breeding and genetic station was created here, in 1934 - the Central Genetic Laboratory. In 1932 the city of Kozlov was renamed Michurinsk. On June 7, 1935, at the age of 80, Ivan Vladimirovich died.

A monument to the great Russian gardener IV Michurin was erected at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow. On the pedestal is a bronze man with a very stern, kind face. He is in an old-fashioned coat, leaning on a cane and holding an apple in his hand.

80 years of the amazing life of Ivan Vladimirovich, a tireless explorer, creator and transformer of nature. He left such a note: "Only I, as I remember myself, have always and completely been absorbed in only one desire for occupations to grow these or those plants, and such a passion was so strong that I almost did not even notice many other details of life: they seemed to everyone passed me by and left almost no trace in my memory. "

The great gardener and breeder for 80 years of his life managed to do so much that many generations will enjoy the fruits of his labor. The plant varieties bred by Michurin have not lost their value. The fame of Michurin's hybrids spread all over the world. In 1913, the US Department of Agriculture persuaded Michurin to move to America or sell his collection of plants, but he refused. He explained it this way: "Adult plants do not take root well in another place, and even more so for people."

The Dutch, who know a lot about flowers, offered Michurin a lot of money (20 thousand royal rubles in gold!) For violet lily bulbs (the flower looks like a lily, but smells like a violet!) On the condition that this flower will no longer be grown in Russia. Not sold ... Michurin's motto: "We cannot wait for favors from nature, it is our task to take them from her." This phrase has a continuation: "But it is necessary to treat nature with respect and care and, if possible, preserve it in its original form ..." Michurin was very fond of roses and brought out about thirty new varieties of roses - Prince Varyagov, Prince Rurik, Neptune, Ceres, Tsarina Sveta and others.

Even at the very beginning of his gardening activity, on the basis of personal observations and after visiting the gardens of the Ryazan, Tula, Kaluga provinces, Ivan Vladimirovich became convinced that the old Russian varieties, due to diseases and pests, gave insignificant yields, and the southern ones had to be wrapped up in the winter. There was a threat of degeneration of Russian varieties, in which case it would be necessary to buy imported apples and pears.

In Michurin's work, over a thousand adult plants and several tens of thousands of young ones, a dozen fruit and berry crops, several dozen botanical species were involved. In the nursery, he collected a unique collection of plants from different parts of the world - from the Far East, the Caucasus, Tibet, from China, Canada and other countries.

Having crossed the wild Ussuri pear with the French variety Bere Diehl, the scientist got a new variety - Bere Zimnyaya Michurina. Its fruits are quite tasty, they lie until February. In addition, the variety bears fruit every year, the bark is not afraid of burns, the flowers are resistant to morning frost. It is not for nothing that this variety is still alive and well, as well as others (Michurin has 48 varieties of apple trees, 15 - pears, 33 - cherries and cherries. And some of them became the donors of winter hardiness when breeding new varieties by modern scientists.

Many people know the apple variety Michurin Pepin saffron, which has already celebrated its centenary. It escapes spring frosts because it blooms late, recovers quickly after being damaged by winter frosts, and bears fruit regularly. The fruits themselves have a dessert taste, are sweet, the jam from them is simply wonderful, fresh apples remain until February.

Fruits of another variety that has not yet left the arena - Bellefleur-Kitainka - retain their qualities less. Although its winter hardiness is not entirely sufficient for growing in the Moscow region, cuttings can be grafted into the crown of another variety. Then the Chinese Bellefleur won't freeze. The main thing for any apple tree is fruits, and in this variety they have an unusually strong aroma and a wonderful refreshing taste.

If the site is located in a place where cold winds flow, where the apple tree is uncomfortable in summer and cold in winter, Bessemyanka Michurinskaya will help out. Fruits, ripening in mid-August, lie until January. Their taste is sweet and sour with aroma. In unfavorable conditions, another Michurin variety is capable of bearing fruit - Kitayka golden early. Small golden yellow apples ripen in early August, but are stored for no more than 10 days. Slavyanka, Renet bergamotny, Pepin-kitaika, Pendant-kitaika, Komsomolets - here are a few more Michurin varieties whose time has not yet passed.

To increase the winter hardiness of plums, Michurin began to work with thorns and obtained three varieties of thorny plums, the fruit of which was mediocre. Then the scientist crossed a plum with a thorny one and bred several varieties. In particular, the collective farm Renklode, which has been kept afloat since 1899 (the name was given later).

Rowan, actinidia, blackthorn, bird cherry, chokeberry, felt cherry grow among many gardeners, but few of them know that Michurin introduced all these plants into the culture. It is interesting that he crossed not only different types of mountain ash with each other, but also engaged in distant hybridization, that is, he crossed the mountain ash with its distant relatives - medlar (Michurinskaya dessert variety), pear (Scarlet large, Rubinovaya), hawthorn (Pomegranate), chokeberry ( Likernaya), apple and pear (Titan) And now all these varieties have the greatest fame. They begin to bear fruit early, trees are not tall, fruits are quite edible, rich in vitamins. Actinidia varieties Klara Zetkin and Pineapple are still the most common in our gardens. And there is an explanation for that. "The Clara Zetkin variety has the valuable property that the shattering of berries during ripening is very small, since the stalk is quite strongly attached to both the berry and the shoots," wrote IV Michurin.

During Michurin's youth, good tobacco was not grown in Russia. The best varieties of Turkish yellow tobacco have not matured. And then the breeder set himself the task of introducing new varieties of tobacco into the culture - an earlier ripening period, with a lower percentage of nicotine. From the fertilization of yellow Bulgarian early tobacco with Sumatra small-leaved tobacco, he received a new early-ripening aromatic variety, capable of ripening not only in the center of Russia, but also in the Urals. Moreover, he developed the agricultural technology of tobacco, and also designed a machine for cutting it. All his life Ivan Vladimirovich kept working diaries. They contain many specific recipes for all occasions in the garden. There is a recipe that is exactly suitable for the end of October - the beginning of November of our time.

Trees and shrubs purchased in the fall, but not planted, need to be dug in. To do this, they choose a slightly elevated place where the water does not stagnate, then a ditch with a depth of 70 centimeters is dug from east to west, and the southern slope of the inner wall should be steep, and the northern slope should be gentle. The earth is thrown out to the southern edge of the ditch. The seedlings are laid on the sloping side, turning their tops to the north, carefully so as not to break, they are covered with moist earth (if the soil is dry, then it is watered and loosened). Trees and shrubs can be stacked in two or three rows, one above the other, placing taller plants in the first row, and shorter and smaller plants in the latter. After laying each row and filling the roots, they are lightly watered and only then the next row is formed. After completing the operation, all the soil remaining from the excavation of the ditch is poured with a shaft over the roots for better drainage of excess spring water. The layer of earth above the roots of the last row should not be thinner than thirty centimeters, otherwise the roots will freeze. So that the seedlings do not damage the mice, spruce branches are thrown under the crowns and on them. To scare away rodents, planted trees are coated with some odorous substances. Do not apply kerosene, lard, tar, oils directly to the bark. It is necessary to apply these compounds to thick paper, straw and tie them around.

The ability to see in living nature what is hidden from an indifferent observer was manifested in Michurin from early childhood. At the age of three, he seriously embarrassed his father and mother (avid gardeners, vegetable growers, flower growers), wishing to take part in sowing seeds. He was refused - he crawled into the basket with his hand. He was pushed aside - he began to run around the beds - and in the end he was beaten. After crying, the boy quieted down, then cheered up and set off as fast as he could toward the house. And a minute later he returned with ... a salt shaker in his hand and began to sow salt on the garden bed. The parents watched in amazement at the small figure barely visible in the deep furrow and feeling awkward in front of each other, rushed to their son with belated affection.

Having started breeding fruit plants at the age of 20, he had no means, no name, no education. What awaited him along the way? Need, mistakes, failures? Statements about the "uselessness" of his works, that these experiments are the essence of "nonsense", insulted the young man, but he was not going to retreat. The marriage in 1874 to a modest, serious girl played a decisive role in this. Sasha was a selfless person and became a faithful friend to her husband, a constant helper and support in the upcoming labors and trials. The firstborn was born - Kolya, two years later - Mashenka. Michurin did not spare his strength and health, took on any work, but the only way out was seen in saving. The father of the family strictly takes into account all expenses to the penny, keeping himself from rash spending. Here is a tragic diary entry: "For five years, there is nothing to think about acquiring land or expanding a plot. Cut costs to the extreme!" He is content with black bread (and that is not enough, but one and a half or two pounds a day) and tea, most often empty ...

The most accurate witness of Michurin's asceticism - daughter Maria Ivanovna - writes: “The father devoted his thoughts and feelings to the world of plants. The endless supply of water, planting, digging and loosening of ridges during the day, writing and reading at night took away the strength of his father. He himself understood this: "Sanya, please prepare a prison for me." she crumbled black bread, cut onions, poured a spoonful of sunflower oil and, diluted with water or kvass, served him. " It was not a feat for the sake of a feat. Michurin ate jail not in the name of tragic glory, but in the name of the future abundance of the gardens of his native country.

For some reason, many believe that he was a reserved and stern man - with an eternal cigarette in his mouth and an invariable cane in his hand. He smoked from the age of twelve until his death, and walked with a cane (if necessary - in his youth he fell unsuccessfully from a tree and injured his kneecap), but he was not gloomy and unsociable. He did not avoid communicating with people; not only gardeners, but also an old acquaintance, the engineer Ground, and the workers of the Kozlovsky depot, were welcome guests.

In the winter of 1881, the head of the Kozlovsky railway depot, engineer Ground, suggested that Michurin equip electric lighting at the Kozlov station. The innovation had just appeared in the largest cities of Russia, but Michurin had solid experience in the mechanical part and, advised by Ground, he completed the task brilliantly. “You should have given up, Mr. Michurin, fiddling with your garden,” the engineer told him. - You are a ready-made first-class electrical engineer. But the "electrical engineer" did not want to hear about the betrayal of the gardening business.

Michurin was an excellent watchmaker. Before he bought the land and started breeding, he kept his own watch workshop and, by the sound of the clock, unmistakably determined what was the problem with the mechanism. In general, he loved to tinker. In his house, the skillful work of the mechanical part was admired: a grafting chisel, a hand pruner, a compact apparatus for forcing essential oil from rose petals, a unique clock of his own work, a lighter, a cigarette case, a light portable machine for cutting tobacco, stuffed cigarettes with Michurinsky tobacco with a special machine varieties, and also fixed bicycles, sewing machines, hunting rifles, telephones and telegraphs ... Had a unique workshop for the manufacture of dummies of fruits and vegetables from wax. They were considered the best in the world and were so skillfully made that others tried to bite them.

Already in adulthood, Michurin independently mastered watercolor, and his drawings were striking in their professionalism, and those concerning gardening were very accurate. In the garden journal, the work was reflected in lovingly written notes. Unfortunately, the records from 1875 to 1886 were lost, but the next half century was recorded with amazing observation. The self-criticism of Ivan Vladimirovich, the frankness with which he described not only successes, but also failures, is striking.

Alexander Kursakov, the great-grandson of I.V. Michurin. The glory of a witch doctor, a sorcerer was fixed for him. He knew many herbs with medicinal properties, prepared all kinds of ointments, decoctions from them, healed migraines, mumps, renal colic, furunculosis, heart failure, even cancer, removed kidney stones. He had the ability to influence plant growth and human behavior. Sometimes, he walked with a cane across the field and showed: "Leave this, this and this, throw out the rest." Out of 10 thousand seedlings, with some instinct, he distinguished two or three. His assistants secretly tried to transplant the plants he had rejected, but none of them gave rise to a new variety. He could talk for hours with a dying plant and then came back to life. He could easily enter any courtyard, and the huge watchdogs did not bark. Birds without fear sat on his hat, shoulders, pecked grain from his palms.

Michurin shocked his acquaintances with an exceptional talent for taming animals and birds. Since childhood, he loved to feed the sparrows - morning and evening, all year round, regardless of the weather. Under the porch jams, plank gutters were arranged for nesting and wintering lively birds. The wide board-feeder, on which Ivan Vladimirovich poured a trickle of hemp and millet grains, was always full of sparrows. In every bird generation, he noted the individuals of "crooks", "bully", "boorish" and "modest", encouraged noble and heroic birds who boldly rushed to the enemy and sacrificed themselves to save others. In his pocket there was always a piece of white bread (black sparrows do not take it), from which the scientist rolled balls, and the sparrows, chirping, sat on his shoulders, on his hat, on his hands. Michurin even tamed frogs, a tame jackdaw lived in his house, he bred pigeons, following the hereditary traits of offspring. Newly painted birds have flown from the attic of his house for decades.

IVAN VLADIMIROVICH Michurin (1855-1935)

Russian breeder *, gardener-geneticist

“As I remember myself, I was always and completely absorbed in only one desire for occupations to grow certain plants, and such a passion was so strong that I almost did not even notice many other details of life.”

Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin

* Breeder- a scientist engaged in crossing plants in order to obtain new varieties.

Ivan Vladimirovich was born in the Ryazan region, not far from the village of Dolgoe, in the family of a small local nobleman.

After graduating from the Pronsk district school, Michurin entered the Ryazan gymnasium, but did not stay there for long due to the ruin of the family - there was nothing to pay for his studies. Therefore, young Michurin began working at the railway station. Studied telegraph, signaling devices, repaired them. Then Michurin became interested in watchmaking and opened his own watch repair shop.

At the age of 20, Ivan Michurin created a plant nursery in the city of Kozlov, Tambov region, and devoted his life to creating new varieties of garden plants.

Even at the very beginning of gardeningIvan Vladimirovichvisited many gardens of Ryazan, Tula, Kaluga regions and became convinced that old Russian varieties, due to diseases and pests, gave insignificant yields, and imported southern plants did not adapt well to our climate - frost, rains, rare sun.

A threat has arisen - Russian varieties will degenerate, and the imported ones will not take root - the Russians will have to buy expensive imported apples and pears.

"It was impossible to repeat the mistakes of the previous gardeners, who in vain hoped to acclimatize foreign varieties. We need to develop new, improved, hardy varieties for each separate area!" , - wrote I. V. Michurin.

In Michurin's work, fifteen fruit and berry crops, several dozen botanical species were involved. In his nursery, he collected a unique collection of plants from different parts of the world - from the Far East, the Caucasus, Tibet, from China, Canada and other countries. All these plants Michurin began to cross with the aim of breeding new Russian varieties!

In 1913 Michurin received an offer to move to work and live in America and sell his collection, he refused.

Michurin's achievements: the scientist brought out about 30 new varieties of roses, as well as violet lily bulbs (the flower looks like a lily, and smells like a violet), 48 varieties of apple trees, 15 varieties of pears and 33 varieties of cherries and cherries, several varieties of plums.Ivan Vladimirovich tHe also brought out varieties of grapes, apricots, blackberries, currants adapted to the conditions of Central Russia. More than 300 varieties of different plants in total!

All his life Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin kept working diaries in which he described and analyzed his work.

Michurin's diaries contain many specific recipes for all occasions in the garden's life, which are still relevant today.

1. Trees and shrubs bought in the fall, but not planted, must be dug in (planted in a specially designated place where water does not stagnate).

2. To scare away rodents, planted trees are coated with some odorous substances. Do not apply kerosene, lard, tar, oils directly to the bark. It is necessary to apply these compounds to thick paper, straw and tie them around.

For outstanding achievements in breeding, Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin was awarded the Order of St. Anna by the Russian government.

Michurin died on June 7, 1935, and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.

Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin's contribution to Russian and world gardening is so great that his name has become a household name. If they say about someone: "Well, he is straight, Michurin!", Then it is immediately clear that the person is a noble gardener.

Today many streets and squares of Russia are named after Michurin:
village Michurovka in the Ryazan region, railway platform Michurinets , Michurinsky prospect in Moscow, Michurin square in Ryazan. Michurin Street is located in Belgorod, Volodarsk, Voronezh, Kemerovo, Samara, Saratov, Saransk, Tomsk, and in other cities. There is even a lake and a village in Karelia named after Michurin!

They made a feature film about Michurin, which has even been translated into Chinese, because Michurin is known in China too!

But the clearest signRussians' love for Michurin - a lot of folk jokes and cartoons about this outstanding breeder!

Anecdotes about Michurin

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Who Invented Barbed Wire? Michurin. He crossed a snake and a hedgehog.

***
Michurin crossed a watermelon with flies so that the seeds would fly out on their own.

***
Michurin crossed a pumpkin with a cherry to make the hybrid taste like a berry and the size of a vegetable. The opposite happened.

A poorly sighted man looks for a long time at a tree, in the foliage of which an electric light is shining: "Well, Michurin, well, I didn't expect it!"

***
How did Michurin die? I climbed onto the poplar for dill, where it was filled with watermelons.

Caricature for Twilight Book and Movie Lovers:

Who did not understand - in the garden CHESNOOOOOK !!!

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Now you understand why like these ones photos are posted on the Internet with a signature "Michurin's Dream" ?!

In his work, IV Michurin made extensive use of hybridization. In doing so, he took into account the complex nature of the hybrids. He believed that hybrid seedlings pass critical periods at various stages of development, during which the implementation of different-quality parental genes occurs.

Based on this assumption, IV Michurin used methods of raising seedlings, influencing them with environmental factors. He used various methods of tillage, fertilization, the mentor's method.

Mentor Method consists in the fact that in the crown of the hybrid seedling a graft is made from the plant, the properties of which must be transferred to the hybrid. Sometimes the hybrid is grafted onto the corresponding stock.

Remote hybridization in the works of Michurin

IV Michurin also widely used and. He found that when southern varieties hybridize with local varieties, traits of local varieties usually dominate. To avoid this, he came to the conclusion that it was necessary to match parents from different geographic areas.

Thus, he bred the Bere winter pear variety thanks to the hybridization of the South European Bere piano with the Ussuri pear. With such hybridization in a hybrid, the hereditary basis of both initial parental forms is found in unusual natural conditions.

By changing the conditions for growing hybrids, Michurin brought up economically valuable traits from them, borrowed from one or the other of the parents. In this particular case, the Bere Zimnaya variety inherited from the southern parent large-fruited, high taste and the possibility of long-term winter storage, and from the Ussuri parent - cold resistance.

Due to the fact that organisms under the influence of the environment can change within the limits of the reaction norm, external factors can influence the phenotypic manifestations of traits. This was used by Michurin when growing hybrids of fruit trees, changing certain conditions at different stages of ontogenesis. The dominance of traits that find the most favorable conditions for development in the environment, Michurin called dominance control.

To overcome non-breeding during distant hybridization, Michurin developed a number of methods.

Michurin's methods

Vegetative convergence method consists in the preliminary grafting of one type of plant on another. As a result, the chemical composition of tissues changes, which, apparently, contributes to the germination of pollen tubes in the pistil of the mother plant. In this way, fertilization can be achieved by hybridizing species that usually do not cross.

Mediator method is that, if it is necessary to obtain a hybrid between non-crossing species A and B, first, hybridization of the crossing of species B with C is carried out, and already the hybrid is crossed with A.

Pollination method with a mixture of pollen from different species may also favor the germination of pollen tubes in the flower pistil and promote fertilization.

Most of the varieties bred by Michurin are heterozygous in genotype, therefore they cannot be reproduced sexually, they will split. They are propagated vegetatively.

Michurin paid much attention to the acclimatization of southern fruit plants and laid the foundation for the advancement of grapes, apricots, cherries, etc. to the north.

A lot has been done by breeders to develop new varieties of agricultural plants. Great in this is the merit of N.V. Tsitsin, P.P. Lukyanenko, V.N. Remeslo, F.G. Kirichenko, V.E. Pisarev, who have developed new varieties of wheat. V.S. Pustovoit created high-oil varieties of sunflower, I.M. Khadzhinov achieved great success in the breeding of corn.

The beginning of organized breeding work in Russia dates back to the end of the 19th century. In 1877 in St. Petersburg and in 1881. in Moscow, stations are being set up to control the quality of seeds. In 1884 the Poltava experimental field was founded, in 1886 - the Nemerchanskaya and Uladovo-Lyulinetskaya experimental stations. In 1896 P.A. Kostychev founded the Shatilov (now Oryol) agricultural experimental station. In 1903 D.L. Rudzinsky organized a selection station at the Moscow Agricultural Institute (now the Moscow Agricultural Academy named after K.A.Timiryazev). In 1909-1912. a number of experimental stations with selection departments are being created: Kharkovskaya, Saratovskaya, Krasnokutskaya, Odessa, Mironovskaya. In the Soviet period, zonal breeding institutions were created (Research Institute of Agriculture of the North-East, South-East, Siberia, Central regions of the Non-Black Earth Zone, Central regions of the Black Earth Zone, Belarus, Ukraine, as well as specialized institutes for winter wheat (Krasnodar), sugar beet (Kiev , Voronezh), for oilseeds (Krasnodar), for corn (Dnepropetrovsk), legumes and cereals (Oryol), for rice (Uzbekistan). On the territory of the Bryansk region there are centers for the selection of potatoes, lupines, raspberries, strawberries, fruit crops.

Works by I. V. Michurin

An invaluable contribution to the development of plant breeding was made by a domestic breeder, an outstanding transformer of nature, Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (1855–1935). The object of selection was a variety of fruit and berry crops: pome, stone fruit; in total I.V. Michurin created over 300 varieties of cultivated plants, some of which are still in use. The basic principles of I.V. Michurina: hybridization, selection, and the impact of environmental conditions. I.V. Michurin has a catch phrase; "We cannot wait for favors from nature, it is our task to take them from her."

I.V. Michurin was not just a talented amateur gardener. He made an invaluable contribution to world science. In particular, Ivan Vladimirovich experimentally substantiated the effect of changing dominance: depending on the soil and climatic conditions, the nature of the rootstock and scion and other factors, the genotype may or may not appear in the phenotype. I.V. Michurin used the mentor's method in his works, based on various combinations of vaccinations. To obtain hybrids I.V. Michurin made extensive use of ecological-geographical crossings - if the parents come from different geographical areas or from different habitats, then heterosis manifests itself most strongly. This is due to the fact that these parents have the most widely differing genotypes, formed in the course of natural selection under different conditions. I.V. Michurin established that the selection of the variety must be carried out in the conditions in which its further exploitation is planned.

Achievements of domestic breeders

It is impossible to list all the outstanding domestic breeders.

Let's name the names and main achievements of only some of them:

Lukyanenko P.P. - winter wheat Bezostaya-1; more than 40 varieties in total;

Craft V.N. - winter wheat Mironovskaya-808;

Lorkh A.G., Bukasov S.M., Yuzepchuk S.V. - potato;

Pustovoit V.S. - high-oil varieties of sunflower;

Zhdanov L.A. - sunflower resistant to broomrape;

Khadzhinov M.I., Galeev G.S. - interline maize hybrids based on CMS;

Tsitsin N.V. - wheat-wheatgrass hybrids;

Mazlumov A.L. - sugar beet.