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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Pavlovsk seed bank faces destruction

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  • From: Bob Bors <bob.bors@usask.ca>
  • To: 'North American Fruit Explorers' <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Pavlovsk seed bank faces destruction
  • Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:34:47 -0600

Thanks Dylan for that update,

 

Unfortunately, there is a bigger disaster around the corner for the whole Vavilov network, especially in the fruit area.

Almost all the scientists maintaining fruit collections at the various research stations are past retirement age.  They are hanging onto their grossly underpaid jobs in hopes that someday the government will pay a salary high enough to interest young people to replace them.  Just like before when they starved to death they are once again hanging on hoping!  When they die off who will know what to do? Where will the expertise come from?

 

I had a visiting scientist from Vavilov visit me two years ago for a month to go plant collecting and visit fruit breeding programs. So I had long conversations on this topic.

He had a PhD and was in charge of all underutilized fruit crops and is a curator in the Vavilov System.  He had 1 technician who was about 70 years old and no one else to help him!  His wife was working at a drug store drawing twice his salary! He was doing the field work.  When he visited 2 years ago he told me about the desire of his superior for him to save the fruit crops as seeds. He thought his superiors was an uninformed field crop scientist, but he also considered it could be a grab for valuable land. After visiting me he had to take on a part time job doing mowing and landscaping at some rich person’s estate to make ends meet. Now that that collection may be destroyed, maybe the seed idea is better than nothing. But it could be too late for that, I don’t think it was ever done.

 

That article mentions as a justification that the collection and buildings are neglected..well there is a reason that happened. No funding and no personnel! It’s not that people in the know thought there was nothing important about the collection.

 

 

 

Dr. Bob Bors

Assistant Professor

Head of the Fruit Program

University of Saskatchewan, Plant Sciences Dept.

51 Campus Drive, Room 2C02

Saskatoon Saskatchewan, S7N 5A8

 

Fruit program website:

http://www.fruit.usask.ca

Phone 306-966-8583, Fax 306-966-5015

preferred logo small jpg

 

 

 

From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of rob hamilton
Sent: August-30-10 8:37 PM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Pavlovsk seed bank faces destruction

 

more info...

Researchers Fight To Save Fruits Of Their Labor


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129499099

 

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From: dylanford <dylanford@optonline.net>
To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wed, August 11, 2010 8:51:57 PM
Subject: [NAFEX] Pavlovsk seed bank faces destruction

 

Pavlovsk seed bank faces destruction

'Priceless collection' in Russia was never registered so is therefore worthless and does not officially exist, say developers

 

Twelve Russian scientists famously chose to starve to death rather than eat the unique collection of seeds and plants they were protecting for humanity during the 900-day siege of Leningrad in the second world war. But the world's first global seed bank now faces destruction once more, to make way for a private housing estate.

The fate of the Pavlovsk agricultural station outside St Petersburg will be decided in the courts this week. If, as expected, the case goes against it then the collection of plants built up over 85 years could be destroyed within months.

At stake, say Russian and British campaigners for the station, is not just scientific history but one of the world's largest collection of strawberries, blackcurrants, apples and cherries. Pavlovsk contains more than 5,000 varieties of seeds and berries from dozens of countries, including more than 100 varieties each of gooseberries and raspberries.

More than 90% of the plants are found in no other research collection or seed bank. Its seeds and berries are thought to possess traits that could be crucial to maintaining productive fruit harvests in many parts of the world as climate change and a rising tide of disease, pests and drought weaken the varieties farmers now grow. As it is predominantly a field collection, Pavlovsk cannot be moved. Experts estimate that even if another site were available nearby, it would take many years to relocate the plants.

In what appears Kafkaesque logic, the property developers argue that because the station contains a "priceless collection", no monetary value can be assigned to it and so it is worthless. In another nod to Kafka, the government's federal fund of residential real estate development has argued that the collection was never registered and thus does not officially exist.

"It is a bitter irony that the single most deliberately destructive act against crop diversity could be about to happen in the country that invented the modern seed bank," said Cary Fowler, of the Global Crop Diversity Trust. "Russia taught the world about the importance of crop collections for the future of agriculture. A decision to destroy Pavlovsk would forever tarnish a cause that generations of Russian plant scientists have lived and, quite literally, died, to protect."

The station was established in 1926 by Nikolai Vavilov, the man credited with creating the idea of seed banks as repositories of plant diversity that could be used to breed new varieties in response to threats to food production. During the siege of Leningrad, 12 scientists chose to starve while protecting the diversity amassed by Vavilov, even though the seeds of rice, peas, corn and wheat that they were protecting could have sustained them. Vavilov died of malnutrition in prison in 1943, having criticised the anti-genetic concepts of Trofim Lysenko. But Russia has since elevated him to hero status.

 

 




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