North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[rob hamilton <lostman_amiga@yahoo.com>]

People have been writing letters to pres. Medvedev according some articles which has had some effect as far as auctioning off the land. Of course that will not effect the actual support for the program. The only thing I feel that we can do for them is to share their story... share our story.  At the very least their work will not be forgotten.

Jerry I urge you to interview them with a tape recorder or video. Have them tell their story (the story of the scientist from the first contact as well if we can) - what the do, what the working conditions are like, the state of the program and its contents. Ed mentioned possibly working on and article revisiting the NAFEX /Russia trip.  I was working on an introduction to that before my computer crashed.

This maybe that most that we can do, but I feel it would be an important contribution.

On the same note the is a very good but sad account of the founder of the institute Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov  who stared to death in prison under Stallin.

 

The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin's Persecution of One of the Great Scientists of the Twentieth Century by Peter Pringle

(it would be nice to see if the author would do a followup with this situation)

Another book I am currently reading is:

Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine by Gary Nabhan

I hope his collection does not end up the same way he did

Robert Hamilton

--------------------------------------------
Now Zone 8a!! Atlanta, GA

Atlanta Fruits Club    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Atlanta_Fruits/
North American Fruit Explorers (NAFEX) www.NAFEX.org
Southern Fruit Fellowship (SFF) www.NAFEX.org/SFF
Southeastern Palm and Exotic Plant Society (SPEPS)
www.SPEPS.net
California Rare Fruit Growers
www.crfg.org

My New Blog!!
http://atlantafruitman.wordpress.com/

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From: Betty Mayfield <bmayfield@opusnet.com>
To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>; North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sun, September 5, 2010 6:49:54 PM
Subject: [NAFEX] Earlier Russian trouble

To the list,

Apparently underfunding of the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry has been going on for some time, according to an article by Gabrielle Strobel in Science News, Dec. 18, 1993, which said the institute was operating on a shoestring.

And other dangers were faced.

"Some of the institute's riches have vanished already. Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Vavilov network consisted of 19 experimental stations, six of them located outside Russia. One of these, the Sukhumi station in Georgia's contested western province of Abkhazia, was destroyed in this year's [1993] civil war.

"Alexey Fogel, an 83-year-old botanist and 50-year veteran of the Sukhumi station, rescued seeds as he fled Abkhazia through mountain paths in the Caucasus range, says Sergey Alexanian, a spokesman for the Vavilov institute. Fogel, his son Vladimir, also a scientist at the Sukhumi station, and two other botanists succeeded in evacuating 226 precious samples of subtropical fruit plants and almost the entire lemon collection to the Russian town of Sochi.

"There the samples will be kept permanently, hopes Alexanian, provided the Russian government absorbs the cost. The institute does not plan to move them to the St. Petersburg collection because the city's climate is not conducive to growing and studying subtropical plants. The 2,000 samples left behind in the Sukhumi station are probably spoiled, Alexanian says."

Betty Mayfield
northwest Oregon

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