Russian and Soviet biologist, founder of scientific selection of fruit, berry and other crops in the USSR, honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1935), academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935).
Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin was born on October 15 (27), 1855 in the forest dacha “Vershina” near the village of Pronsky district of the Ryazan province (now in) in the family of an impoverished small-scale nobleman, retired provincial secretary V.I. Michurin.
I. V. Michurin received elementary education at home, and then at the Pronsky district school, devoting his free and vacation time to working in the garden. He graduated from college in June 1872. His father prepared him according to the gymnasium course for admission to the Alexander Lyceum in, but his father’s sudden illness and the sale of the estate for debts made adjustments to these plans.
In 1872, I. V. Michurin entered the 1st Ryazan Classical Gymnasium, but in the same year he was expelled from it “for disrespect to his superiors.” Then he had to move to, a district town in the Tambov province, where he spent his entire future life.
In 1872-1876, I.V. Michurin worked at the station of the Ryazan-Ural Railway. At first he was a commercial clerk in a goods office, and from 1874 he held the position of goods cashier, and then one of the assistant stationmasters. In 1876-1889, I.V. Michurin was an assembler of clocks and signaling devices on the railway section -.
Struggling with a constant lack of funds, I. V. Michurin opened a watch workshop in the city, next to his apartment. He devoted his free time to work on creating new varieties of fruit and berry crops. In 1875, I.V. Michurin rented a plot of land (about 500 sq. m), where he began work on collecting plant collections and breeding new varieties of fruit and berry crops. In 1888, he purchased a new plot of land (about 13 hectares) on the outskirts of the city, where he moved his plants and where he lived and worked until the end of his life. Since 1888, this site near the settlement became one of the first breeding nurseries.
In 1906, the first scientific works of I. V. Michurin, devoted to the problems of breeding new varieties, were published fruit trees. In 1912, the works of the scientist-breeder were awarded the Order of St. Anna, 3rd degree, and in 1913 - the badge “For Works in Agriculture” in memory of the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov.
With the establishment Soviet power In 1917, I.V. Michurin immediately announced his readiness to cooperate with the new administration. His works were appreciated and widely disseminated. The scientist took part in the agronomic work of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture and advised specialists Agriculture on issues of breeding, combating drought, increasing productivity, attended local agronomic meetings.
In 1920, he instructed the People's Commissar of Agriculture S.P. Sereda to organize the study of scientific works and practical achievements of I.V. Michurin. On behalf of September 11, 1922, the scientist was visited by the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee M. I. Kalinin. On November 20, 1923, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR recognized the experimental nursery of I.V. Michurin as an institution of national importance. On the basis of the Michurin nursery in 1928, the Selection and Genetic Station of Fruit and Berry Crops was organized, which in 1934 was reorganized into the Central Genetic Laboratory named after I.V. Michurin.
The scientist’s works were awarded the Order (1931) and the Red Banner of Labor (1926). During his lifetime in 1932, the city was renamed. I. V. Michurin died on June 7, 1935 and was buried on the territory of the collection nursery of the Fruit and Vegetable Institute named after I. V. Michurin (now Michurin State Agrarian University).
I. V. Michurin made a great contribution to the development of genetics, especially fruit and berry plants. He became one of the founders of scientific selection of agricultural crops. They developed theoretical basis and some practical techniques for remote hybridization. A talented experimenter, honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, full member of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, I. V. Michurin entered science as the creator of over 300 plant species.
Just a quarter of a century ago, the name of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin was known to everyone, his discoveries were proclaimed the highest achievement of science, and any gardener proudly called himself a “Michurinist.” Today, if anyone remembers this name, then, on average, it is in the form of a myth about an eccentric who, for some unknown reason, crossed an apple tree with a pear tree.
“Michura” from the Vershina estate »
To understand Michurin, you need to take a closer look at the era with which the formation of his personality is associated. The reforms of Alexander II in the 1860s brought to life a generation that rejected the ideals of their fathers and naively believed in the omnipotence of science.
Such was Michurin’s father, whom he Soviet time slyly called him a “farm worker.” In fact, Vladimir Ivanovich belonged to an old, albeit impoverished, noble family. Michurins, whose surname came from dialect word“Michura - which means gloomy, taciturn - have long owned the village of Dolgoe in the Ryazan region. There, in October 1855, the future genius of selection was born. His father, without listening to his parents, married a girl Masha “from the simple ones.” For this he was deprived of his inheritance and was forced to earn money by gardening in his small estate “Vershina”. Despite their noble title, they lived meagerly and sadly - before Vanya, the couple had six children, but none of them lived even a year. In 1859, Maria Petrovna herself died of a fever.
Under the blows of fate, Vladimir Ivanovich did not break. He not only took care of his estate, but also introduced new gardening methods in the area, published articles in the St. Petersburg magazine “Gardening,” and in his free time taught peasant children to read and write. The son was left to his own devices and enthusiastically ran to the garden, to the apiary, to the forest, studying everything that lived and grew there.
Since childhood, Vanya loved working in the garden - even despite the fact that at the age of three, when his parents were planting seedlings, he tried in every possible way to participate in the process, got underfoot and was eventually beaten. Crying bitterly, the boy wandered home, returned from there with a salt shaker and began to sow salt over the loosened bed. Seeing such diligence, the father gradually began to involve his son in working in the garden. By the age of twelve, he knew and was more skilled than many adult gardeners, and was fluent in complex methods of plant grafting. There was some harm to his health: having fallen from an apple tree, he injured his knee and since then he has been walking, leaning on a stick.
But at the Pronsky district school, Vanya was a solid C student. Writing and mathematics seemed boring to him, and he looked forward to the weekend to escape to his homestead. I have received criticism more than once for being disrespectful to teachers.
Michurin was never the kind and kind person that Soviet biographers portray him as. He showed endless kindness only to plants and animals. He was unfriendly with people, and often rude - especially when he was prevented from doing what he loved. In this he resembled another self-taught inventor, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Their fates are surprisingly similar: both struggled with poverty and misunderstanding of those around them, both at the end of their lives tasted state honors under Soviet rule and acquired a lot of students. They even died in the same year, although Tsiolkovsky was born two years later. True, Michurin, unlike his “twin,” never considered himself a genius. But he had a cherished dream - to achieve the ripening of southern peaches, lemons, and grapes in the cold Russian latitudes. Having seen enough of the meager life of his fellow countrymen, he wanted to sweeten it with fruits - what could be more noble?
His father fully approved of Vanino’s desire, but convinced him that he first needed to learn. He began to prepare his son for admission to the famous Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, but then thunder struck - the “progressive owner” Vladimir Ivanovich went bankrupt. “Vershina” was sold for debts, and I had to give up my dreams of a lyceum. His uncle got him into a local gymnasium, but a year later Michurin was expelled from there - he refused to take off his hat in front of the director. To add insult to injury, his father fell ill with severe kidney disease, and Ivan became the breadwinner of a small family.
In 1872, he got a job as a clerk at a railway station in the city of Kozlov, Tambov province. This small town became his home for the rest of his life. Here he met his life partner - the daughter of a worker, Alexandra Petrushina. The young couple got married in 1875, soon a son, Nikolai, was born, followed by a daughter, Maria. The twelve rubles a month that Michurin received on the railway were barely enough to feed him. And soon he quit his job altogether, deciding to devote himself entirely to his favorite gardening.
Kozlovsky suffering in a damp hut
The street on which Michurin rented a house was called Piteynaya because of the abundance of taverns standing on it. However, the Kozlov residents not only drank, but also ate - the city was buried in green trees, and vegetables and fruits ripened perfectly on the local black soil. The Russified Frenchman Romain Dulneau briskly traded seedlings of southern apple and cherry trees brought from abroad. True, very soon the capricious guests froze and wasted away - the winters in Kozlov were not harsh in the south.
Michurin decided to correct the situation. For experiments, he rented an empty estate with a garden from the merchant Gorbunov and moved his family there. Very soon there was nowhere to walk in the house from pots, boxes, boxes with seedlings. IN three rooms, kitchen, pantry and, of course, in the garden there are 600 species of plants - lemons, oranges, roses, magnolias, exotic araucarias and yuccas and even Virginia tobacco. The children were sick, the wife began to grumble. I had to move to a more spacious house, but after a couple of years it turned out to be filled to capacity. Money was also tight, although Michurin had golden hands - at one time he alone, without any help, installed electric lighting at the Kozlov station. The head of the depot, engineer Ground, then said: “Abandon your garden, Mr. Michurin! You are a first-class electrical engineer.” Instead, Ivan Vladimirovich quit his job and opened a watch repair shop, sewing machines and other small equipment. In addition, he monitored the serviceability of the clock at the station - together he earned about 40 rubles a month.
In 1887, Michurin learned that the priest Yastrebov was selling large plot land near the city, on the banks of the Lesnoy Voronezh River. Having saved money with difficulty, the gardener moved there. In order to acquire the desired plot, he put the whole family on starvation rations - White bread and sugar on weekends, meat on holidays. For a long time, the main food was bread and onion soup and liquid tea. To save money, the Michurins manually dragged bags of soil and boxes of seedlings from the city.
Daughter Maria recalled: “The father forgot about clothes, about food, about the need and lack of money of the family and invested all his meager income in extracting the seeds that interested him. His mother went to meet him halfway, also denying herself everything she needed. The endless supply of water, planting plants, digging and loosening beds during the day, writing and reading at night took away my father’s strength.”
The efforts were not in vain - five years later, orderly rows of young apple, pear, and cherry trees appeared on the former wasteland. For the first time in Kozlov, peaches, apricots, and grapes grew here. In 1888, Michurin developed his first frost-resistant hybrid - the “Princess of the North” cherry, which after the revolution was renamed “Beauty of the North”.
Things were going hard - not having the necessary education, the self-taught man trusted the “authoritative” opinion of the Moscow gardener Grell. He argued that it is easy to develop new varieties - it is enough to graft southern fruit plants onto local, more unpretentious ones. Michurin tried to do this for a long time, but the seedlings died.
Then he moved on to more complex method- artificial crossing and long-term changes in the properties of the resulting hybrids. He saw that different varieties of apples or plums produced viable hybrids within a few years. And the further these varieties are in relationship and geographic location, the better their hybrids adapt to local conditions. This happened with the Chinese apple tree, to which he grafted delicate European varieties - kandil, bellefleur, pepin and others. Hybrid apples were large, juicy and at the same time frost-resistant, like their Chinese ancestor.
Michurin tried to repeat the same operation with bere and duchess pears, Rencloud plums and other heat-loving fruits. Things were going hard until the gardener realized the reason: the black soil on his plot was too fat and “spoiled” his hybrids, reducing their resistance to frost. I had to again look for a new site, transport property there, and carve out funds from the meager budget for seeds and seedlings.
In 1899, Michurin moved to the Donskoye settlement, which became his final refuge. By that time, the children, who were tired of fiddling with the garden to death, left him - the daughter got married, and the son got a job as a mechanic at the station. Ivan Vladimirovich and Alexandra Vasilievna had difficulty managing the large household. Hard work, malnutrition, and spending the night in a damp hut undermined the health of both. There were other problems: a local priest, Father Christopher, got into the habit of visiting Michurin. He asked, and then demanded, that the “ungodly” breeding of new breeds, which was confusing the minds of parishioners, be abandoned. The gardener, not known for humility, showed the guest to the door. The boys were also in the way, carrying ruddy Michurin fruits. The owner of the garden either ran after them with a stick, or tried to persuade them, but it was of little use.
“Russians are not for sale”
And yet, by 1905, Michurin had already developed quite a few hybrid varieties: apple trees “Kandil-Chinese”, “Renet bergamotny”, “Northern Saffron”, pears “Winter Bere” and “Bergamot Novik”, plum “Renklod reforma”. By crossing ordinary rowan with black chokeberry, he got a new healthy berry - chokeberry. I tried to grow frost-resistant grapes.
And the flowers in his garden bloomed in such a way that the Frenchman Dulno was thrilled with admiration: “You, Monsieur Michurin, need to sell roses. Listen to me and you will get rich!” But Ivan Vladimirovich, as a true fanatic of science, was indifferent to money. Of course, he sold his seedlings and flowers, but ineptly, almost at a loss. Having suffered with the merchant women who spent an hour choosing bouquets - “Oh, sir, these flowers are not at all to my taste!” - stopped trading and ran away to his favorite garden.
At the turn of the century, this science was experiencing a real revolution - the experiments of the Czech monk Gregor Mendel gave rise to the doctrine of genes. Michurin did not understand and did not accept this theory. For many years, tinkering with plants, he did not see any genes. He knew how to obtain new varieties through crossing and long selection, and in the spirit of Charles Darwin, he considered this selection - natural or artificial - the main engine of evolution. The doctrine of invisible particles transmitting the hereditary properties of species seemed absurd to him.
However, on the eve of the revolution, Michurin had more important concerns than the fight against genetics. In 1915, a powerful flood flooded his nursery, destroying many valuable hybrids. That same summer, a cholera epidemic struck Kozlov. While helping to treat the sick, Ivan Vladimirovich’s wife, the last person close to him, became infected and died. And soon he received from the authorities another refusal in subsidies for the development of horticulture. There were many such refusals, and each one deeply hurt Michurin - does his country really not need him?
Unexpected recognition came from overseas. A representative of the US government, Frank Meyer, visited Michurin three times and bought seedlings of the varieties he had bred. Later, the gardener said that the American persuaded him to leave, promising him a lot of money and even a ship to export the plants. But in response he received a proud: “Russians are not for sale!”
Caressed by October
Having learned about the October Revolution, Michurin wrote in his diary: “I will work as before - for the people.” Soon commissioners came to the nursery and declared it state-owned. True, the owner was left in charge and given a substantial salary - they say, under the patronage of a local Bolshevik, whom the gardener once hid from the police.
The nursery expanded - the lands of the liquidated monastery were given to it. Michurin could no longer cope with the farm, and an experienced agronomist, Joseph Gorshkov, and then numerous student trainees were sent to help him. In 1921, Michurin apples and pears went to an exhibition in Tambov, and soon they became known in Moscow. Secretary of the Council of People's Commissars Nikolai Gorbunov, no stranger to gardening, heard from someone about Kozlov's self-taught gardener and told Lenin about him. He was delighted and sent the “all-Union headman” Mikhail Kalinin to visit Michurin. The old intellectual, feeding the people with miracle fruits, became a godsend for Soviet propaganda. Moreover, he willingly played his assigned role, praising the party and its leaders.
For this, Ivan Vladimirovich received not only fame, but also tangible material benefits. His nursery grew from 8 to 20, and then to 100 hectares. More than a hundred people worked there, monitoring the condition of the freshly grafted hybrids day and night. The expeditions brought new plant species from the Caucasus to Michurin, Central Asia, Far East. He conducted experiments with ginseng, lemongrass, and actinidia. In 1928, the nursery was renamed the breeding station named after Michurin. Soon the first horticultural college was opened in Kozlov, also named after Michurin. And in 1932, this name was assigned to the city itself; it has not been renamed to this day.
To the credit of the breeder, he did not become proud and did not turn into a loud master. The person who gave the name own city, was still as modest, walked around in the same shabby canvas jacket and felt hat. As before, every day he went out onto the porch to feed the sparrows - he knew them by sight, and gave each one his name. He picked up wounded birds in the forest, nursed them to health and kept them at home for a long time. He even managed to tame frogs - when they heard his steps, they climbed out onto the shore and waited for a treat in the form of dry flies.
Hostage to intrigue
Meanwhile, passions began to boil around the old scientist. In 1929, a young Ukrainian agronomist Trofim Lysenko sent him an article on vernalization - a new method of converting winter crops into spring crops. In the letter, Lysenko emphasized that his method develops Michurin’s doctrine of the decisive importance of external influences for evolution. After reading the letter, the old man shrugged: he had repeatedly called for the promotion of new varieties only after careful testing. He explained that the methods for creating new varieties work only in experienced and caring hands - such as his hands.
But Lysenko was not interested in such “trifles” - he correctly understood the general line of the party. After collectivization and famine in the first half of the 1930s, Stalin needed to increase harvests as quickly as possible and feed the country. Lysenko with his vernalization came in handy, and the leader liked his method - not to look for some genes under a microscope, but to influence plants decisively and aggressively! This is the only way to turn winter wheat into spring wheat, rye into barley, and potatoes into pineapples...
Lysenko presented all this under the name of “Michurin biology,” although Ivan Vladimirovich never recognized him as his student. Hiding behind a portrait-icon of a promoted breeder, Lysenko managed to remove academician Nikolai Vavilov from the post of president of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences and soon took his place, becoming an all-powerful dictator in biology for twenty years.
But Michurin no longer cared about this. At the beginning of 1935, doctors found he had stomach cancer, but despite the pain, he last day I spent my life working in the garden. On June 7, he died and was solemnly buried in the park near the technical school he founded. On the sides of the grave, like guards, stood four apple trees - “Kandil-Chinese”, “Bellefleur-Chinese”, “Pepin-China” and “Pepin-saffron”.
Michurin died, and Lysenko continued the destruction of genetics, discarding Russian science in this area far back. When putting forward his theories, he invariably hid behind the name of “teacher.” It is no wonder that the debunking of Lysenko during the “thaw” years also affected Michurin. His books were published less and less often, and criticism of him was heard more and more often. They claimed that all his achievements were the bluff of party propaganda. His nursery - now the All-Russian Research Institute of Genetics and Selection of Fruit Plants - was repeatedly threatened with closure. But he works and, what’s most interesting, continues to develop new varieties.
Indeed, in addition to confusing theories, Michurin left his students and all of us the main lesson - the garden will bear fruit under any sane government, only if it is looked after with patience and love. In this case, the garden can also become a pillar of the state.
Michurin Ivan Vladimirovich (10/27/1855, Vershina estate, Ryazan province 06/07/1935, Michurinsk, Tambov region), Soviet biologist, founder of scientific selection of fruit, berry and other crops in the USSR; honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1935), academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935). Born into the family of a small nobleman. In 1875, he rented a plot of land in Kozlov (about 500 m2), where he began work on collecting plant collections and breeding new varieties of fruit and berry crops. In 1899 he purchased a new plot of land (about 13 hectares) on the outskirts of the city, where he moved his plants and where he lived and worked until the end of his life.
Only under Soviet power were Michurin’s works appreciated and widely developed. On the basis of the Michurinsky nursery in 1928, the Selection and Genetic Station of Fruit and Berry Crops was organized, which in 1934 was reorganized into the Central Genetic Laboratory named after. I. V. Michurina.
Michurin made a great contribution to the development of genetics, especially fruit and berry crops. In the cytogenetics laboratory he organized, cell structure was studied and experiments on artificial polyploidy were performed. Michurin studied heredity in connection with the patterns of ontogenesis and external conditions and created the doctrine of dominance. Michurin proved that dominance is a historical category that depends on heredity, ontogenesis and phylogeny of the original forms, on the individual characteristics of hybrids, as well as on the conditions of upbringing. In his works, he substantiated the possibility of changing the genotype under the influence of external conditions.
Michurin is one of the founders of scientific selection of agricultural crops. Critical questions, developed by Michurin: intervarietal and distant hybridization, methods of raising hybrids in connection with the laws of ontogenesis, dominance management, mentor method, assessment and selection of seedlings, acceleration of the selection process using physical and chemical factors. Michurin created the theory of selecting initial forms for crossing. He found that the further apart the pairs of crossed producer plants are in the place of their homeland and the conditions of their environment, the easier it is for the hybrid seedlings to adapt to the environmental conditions in a new area.
Crossing of geographically distant forms was widely used after Michurin and many other breeders. Michurin developed the theoretical foundations and some practical techniques distant hybridization. He proposed methods for overcoming the genetic barrier of incompatibility during distant hybridization: pollination of young hybrids during their first flowering, preliminary vegetative rapprochement, use of an intermediary, pollination with a pollen mixture, etc.
In the 1930s he opposed research in genetics and eugenics.
In the USSR, Michurin varieties have been zoned: apple trees Pepin saffron, Slavyanka, Bessemyanka Michurinskaya, Bellefleur-Chinese and others, pears Bere winter Michurina, cherries Nadezhda Krupskaya, Fertile Michurina and others, mountain ash Chernoplodnaya and others. Michurin marked the beginning of the advancement of grapes and apricots to the north , cherries and other southern crops. Awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin is a famous biologist-breeder, creator of many modern varieties of fruit and berry crops. Since 1935, Michurin has been an honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Order of St. Anne (1913), the Order of Lenin (1931) and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. Michurin republished collections of essays about various methods selection of plant varieties. Of particular interest are his unique methods of hybridization of fruit and vegetable crops: the author selected parental pairs, overcoming their lack of crossbreeding.
The ancestors of Ivan Vladimirovich and their family tradition of passion for gardening could not but affect the fate of Michurin. Michurin was born in the village of Vershina, Pronsky district, Ryazan region. He was the seventh child in a poor peasant family. His brothers and sisters died at an early age, and his mother died in her thirty-fourth year. Ivan was then four years old. Already with early age Michurin began to show interest in plants: he was fond of gardening, collecting fruit trees, and adding agricultural literature to his library.
At first Michurin studied at home, then went to the Pronsky district school. After graduating from college, Michurin was preparing to enter the St. Petersburg Lyceum. Due to the unexpected illness of his father, Ivan Vladimirovich was forced to enter the Ryazan gymnasium instead of the St. Petersburg Lyceum, so as not to leave far from his parent. The father soon died, the estate went bankrupt, and his aunt took care of Ivan Vladimirovich. In 1872, Michurin was expelled from the gymnasium for “disrespect for superiors,” which in fact was due to the failure to hand over a bribe to his superiors.
That same year, Michurin left Ryazan and went to the city of Kozlov, where he spent the next years of his life. He had to earn a living somehow, so Michurin got a job as a commercial clerk in one of the commodity offices with a 16-hour working day and 12 rubles a month. Two years later, Michurin occupied the position of assistant chief, but not for long; a quarrel with the station chief disrupted his plans. Michurin changed jobs and began repairing clocks and signaling devices.
Then he opened his own watch workshop. However, he still wanted to study plants and their species. Soon he managed to rent an abandoned estate in the Kozlov area, with an area of 130 hectares, with a small land plot, where Michurin began to conduct breeding experiments with more than 600 plant species. Moving to the city estate of his acquaintances, Michurin bred the first varieties of plants: raspberry Commerce, cherry Griot, cherry Beauty of the North, etc. But soon this estate was planted with plants.
Michurin's attention was attracted by the estate being sold by priest Yastrebov, with a plot of land of 12.5 acres. Although half of the plot was located under the river, under bushes and a ravine, Michurin was still pleased with the acquired estate. Years later, this estate-nursery became one of the first breeding centers in Russia, and a few years later - the central estate of the state farm named after. I.V. Michurina. Between 1893 and 1896, hybrids of plums, cherries, apricots and grapes were bred in the nursery. But all these seedlings were unable to undergo acclimatization using the grafting method, since the powerful black soil constantly saturated them. Then Michurin transplanted the plants into poorer soils so that they would acquire Spartan hardening.
In 1906, the first scientific publications of I.V. Michurin were published, touching on the problem of new breeding of fruit tree varieties. Already in 1912, Michurin was awarded the Order of Anna, third degree, for his achievements. In 1913, the Americans offered Michurin to sell a collection of varieties, but the breeder refused. In 1915, as a result of a spring flood, the nursery was flooded: many hybrids died. In the same year, Michurin's wife dies due to a cholera epidemic.
At this time, Michurin finds confirmation of his assumptions about the law of inheritance of traits in plants. Immersing himself in his work, Michurin slowly forgets about the tragedies that happened. Now each issue of Progressive Gardening and Horticulture begins with articles by Michurin. In 1917, with the beginning of the February Revolution, Michurin declared that he wanted to cooperate with the new government. The answer came immediately. On November 22, 1918, the People's Commissariat concluded a resolution to accept Michurin's nursery into its department, and Michurin himself was appointed head of this nursery with the right to invite workers to further expand production.
By 1922, Michurin produced over 150 new varieties of fruit trees and shrubs: apple trees - 45 varieties, pears - 20 varieties, cherries - 13 varieties, cherries - 6 varieties, rowan - 3 varieties, etc.
In 1934, a genetic laboratory named after A.I. was created on the basis of the nursery. I.V. Michurina, engaged in the development of new varieties and species of plants, which exists to this day. The Fruit Growing Research Institute was founded here. Michurin and Michurin State Agrarian University. Contribution of I.V. Michurin in the development of science and the state as a whole was so great that the city of Kozlov, even during Michurin’s lifetime in 1932, was renamed
Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (1855-1935)
We cannot wait for favors from nature; taking them from her is our task.” “Whoever does not master the technique of some art, science or craft will never be able to create something outstanding...” These words belong to Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, who perfectly mastered the technique of the art of creating new life, grow new wonderful varieties of fruits, berries and flowers. He was truly a restless, greedy transformer of nature, a creator of new life, who set himself the goal of renewing the earth. The life of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin is a real scientific labor feat.
Ivan Vladimirovich was born in the village of Dolgoye, Pronsky district, Ryazan province, on October 27, 1855. Michurin’s great-grandfather, grandfather and father were lovers of fruit growing. In the former Kaluga province, where Michurin’s ancestors lived before, Michurin pears bred by one of these ancestors are still known.
In order to achieve great things in life, it is very important to set yourself a big goal early, to feel your life calling early and then persistently, with all the strength of will, follow this calling, to move towards your life goal.
Michurin found his calling in life early. He wrote: “...as far as I can remember, I was always and completely absorbed in just one desire to engage in cultivation of certain plants, and such a passion was so strong that I almost did not even notice many other details of life: they seemed “Everyone passed me by and left almost no traces in my memory.”
I.V. Michurin managed to graduate from the Pronsky district school and enter the Ryazan gymnasium. But he was soon expelled from the gymnasium under the pretext of “disrespect” towards the authorities, but in fact because the authorities demanded a bribe and did not receive it. I. V. Michurin dreamed of higher education, but he did not even manage to graduate from high school. Nineteen-year-old Michurin was forced to become a clerk in a goods office at the Kozlov station of the Ryazan-Ural Railway from a month wages at 12 rubles.
In 1874, I.V. Michurin married the daughter of a worker, Alexandra Vasilyevna Petrushina. This led him to a break with his parents - impoverished nobles who were outraged by this choice of their son. Ivan Vladimirovich began his independent life almost in poverty. But the modest railway clerk, abandoned by fate to the remote provincial town of Kozlov, was full of bright hopes and dreams. He wrote:
“After thirteen years of comprehensive theoretical and practical study of plant life in general and, in particular, the business of gardening and its needs in the areas of central Russia, after I traveled and examined all the gardens and garden establishments outstanding at that time, and also on the basis of personal testing the qualities and properties of fruit trees suitable for cultivation in the middle and northern parts of former European Russia, in 1888 I came to the conclusion that the state of our gardening was too low... It became obvious that there was an urgent need for a radical improvement in the assortment of our gardens by replenishing them with more productive varieties of the best quality, which forced me to found in 1888 garden nursery for the sole purpose of breeding new, better and more productive varieties of fruit plants."
It started with a tiny front garden near a house in the city. Here, on a small piece of land, I.V. Michurin could grow only a small number of fruit trees. Only in 1895 was Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin able to save up money to buy an estate outside the city, where he and his wife carried his expensive plants in his arms. From Ivan Vladimirovich’s work diaries it is clear how widely and with what energy he developed his creative activity here.
Here is the entry: "Crops of 1887." It shows that I.V. Michurin worked very hard on many plants. There are also fruits and berries - pears, apples, cherries, plums and peaches; there are also vegetables - melons, watermelons; there are floral and decorative ones - carnations, primroses, gladioli, petunias, begonias, gloxinias, cyclamens, kalistegia, lilies, dahlias, daffodils, etc.; all the listed plants - different varieties. The same entry includes various palms, dracaenas, magnolias, camellias, cycads, eucalyptus, lemon, orange, bitter orange, cedar, Engelmann spruce, etc.
I. V. Michurin - an insatiable explorer of nature in his searches - with my own hands sows, grafts, cuttings; conducts extensive experimental research; achieves good rapid rooting of cuttings, tests different compositions for covering cuts and different compositions of the substrate in which the cuttings are planted.
The diaries of I.V. Michurin show what difficulties he had to overcome. He plants cuttings, without laboratory glassware, in sprat and jam jars, in glasses, in bottles, in a vessel from a Bunsen element. Material worries always hang over the creative work of the researcher. I had to count pennies.
I. V. Michurin’s entry “Crops of 1887” took only 8 pages of printed text, but the content contained in it creative work A single researcher could be the envy of more than one large research institute with dozens of scientists. Meanwhile, I.V. Michurin at this time had to work not only without support, but even in an atmosphere of alienation and hostility towards the new business. With amazing devotion to the idea that had taken possession of him, clenched on small area his garden, I.V. Michurin, who did not have any official diplomas, worked to create a new fairy-tale world of northern fruits, wonderful in taste, size and beauty.
The tsarist government was greatly surprised when news began to arrive from abroad about Kozlov’s “eccentric.” “In 1898, an all-Canadian congress of farmers, meeting after a harsh winter, stated that all the old varieties of cherries of both European and American origin in Canada were frozen out, with the exception of “Fertile Michurin” from the city of Kozlov (in Russia).” So wrote the Canadian professor Saunders. The fame of I. V. Michurin’s new wonderful varieties of fruit plants spread in the United States of America. From there, the Department of Agriculture sent its specialist, Professor F.N. Meyer, to I.V. Michurin and made I.V. Michurin an offer to sell all his living collections to America. At that time, I.V. Michurin was in a difficult financial situation. And yet very profitable proposition the Americans were not tempted by him. He loved his homeland and wanted to pass on the fruits of his creativity to his people.
Under the influence of news from America, even the thick-skinned tsarist government became worried. It awarded I.V. Michurin the cross of “St. Anne”, 3rd degree, “for services in the agricultural field,” but did not provide any real support to I.V. Michurin in his most valuable creative work. Meanwhile, old age was approaching.
In 1914, at the age of about 60, this man with an iron will burst out with bitter words: “The years have passed and the strength has been exhausted, it is extremely disappointing to work for so many years for the common benefit of a person and not have any provision for oneself in old age.”
Three years later the Great October Socialist Revolution came. I. V. Michurin, who did not leave his nursery throughout the entire period of the February Revolution, appeared on the very next day after the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies took power into their own hands, not paying attention to the shooting that was still continuing in the streets. organized the county land commissariat and declared: “I want to work for the new government.”
V.I. Lenin and I.V. Stalin showed great personal concern for I.V. Michurin. Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin visited I.V. Michurin in Kozlov twice. New research and development centers have grown in Kozlov educational establishments named after Michurin: Selection and genetic station, Institute of Northern Fruit Growing, technical school, higher school. The city of Kozlov itself turned into Michurinsk - a large scientific center of northern fruit growing. In 1934, eighty-year-old I. V. Michurin wrote: “Life has become different, full of meaning, interesting, joyful.”
Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin was one of those “eccentrics” who, in the words of Maxim Gorky, adorn the world. He wanted to “move” the south to the north. He wanted winter-hardy varieties of apple trees, pears, plums, grapes and other plants with fruits no worse than the beautiful southern varieties to grow somewhere in the Voronezh or Tambov provinces and even further to the north.
Ivan Vladimirovich’s creative research was built on two main foundations. He himself created and developed these foundations and filled them with his original Michurin content. These basics are distant crossing and nurturing of plants.
Distant crossing or distant hybridization are called distant because they cross with each other and produce the offspring of two parent plants that are distant in their relationship in evolution and in their geographical origin.
There is a southern variety of apple tree - American yellow Bellefleur. It has large, tasty fruits. In addition, they ripen late and can be stored for a long time in winter. But the Bellefleur apple tree does not have sufficient winter hardiness. I. V. Michurin sets himself the task of obtaining new variety an apple tree whose fruit would be no worse than Bellefleur, but the tree itself would withstand winter well. To do this, I.V. Michurin fertilizes Bellefleur with pollen from the Chinese apple tree. The Chinese apple tree is related to the wild Siberian apple tree and is characterized by great winter hardiness, but its fruits are very small (they are used for jam called “paradise apples”).
Bellefleur American and Chinese apple are distant both in relationship, since they belong to two different types of apple trees, and in their geographical origin. From their crossing, I.V. Michurin received a seed from which he developed his new variety Bellefleur-Kitaika. But to develop this variety, the scientist had to work a lot.
When a young apple tree grown from a seed in its seventh year of life bore its first fruits, they ripened relatively early - in August, but turned out to be not large enough. To improve the properties of fruits, I.V. Michurin used the “mentor” method, i.e., educator, the essence of which is that, wanting to obtain hybrid varieties with desirable properties, the gardener grafts a cutting of that plant variety into the crown of a hybrid plant , the properties of which he wants to transfer to hybrid fruits. The transplanted cutting affects the hybrid plant, as if nurturing it in the desired direction. Hence the name of this method. I.V. Michurin grafted cuttings of the maternal species Bellefleur americana into the crown of this young apple tree as mentors, or educators. This, indeed, had an effect on the young apple tree, and it began to bear ripe fruits later and larger. But I.V. Michurin was not satisfied with this. He grafted cuttings of winter varieties of apple trees with shelf-stable fruits onto his tree.
As a result of all this, the fruit weight of the new variety increased from 154 to 222 grams, and the ripening time was delayed by approximately 90 days. Subsequently, I.V. Michurin increased the weight of the fruits of the Chinese bellefleur to 340 grams. This Bellefleur-Kitaiki variety turned out to be quite frost-resistant in the Ivanovo region, 500 kilometers north of the city of Michurinsk. In its beauty and taste, Bellefleur-China is not inferior to its mother plant, Bellefleur yellow American. At good conditions When stored in winter, fruits can be stored until February without losing their taste at all. Distant hybridization was only the beginning of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin’s work on the creation of this variety. Very great importance had at the same time the methods of education they used.
Why was distant crossing necessary? When crossing closely related small varieties living in the same area with each other, major changes cannot be achieved. Only very limited minor improvements will be obtained. And with distant crossing, you can go far beyond these minor improvements. It is characteristic that during distant crossings I.V. Michurin did not take local wild varieties of fruit and berry plants, despite their high frost resistance. The fact is that these varieties are very well adapted to the conditions of the local climate and, when crossed with plants from other places, suppress the properties of these plants, including the valuable qualities of their fruits.
Ivan Vladimirovich put forward and proved the position that “the farther the pairs of crossed producer plants are separated from each other in the place of their homeland and the conditions of their environment, the easier it is for the hybrid seedlings to adapt to the environmental conditions in a new area.”
The method of distant crossing began to be used by I.V. Michurin in 1884. This is a remarkable discovery of I.V. Michurin for a long time was not understood by the theoretical science of heredity and variability - genetics. Only in September 1923 at a meeting German society heredity, the famous geneticist Renner said: “Perhaps we will have more success if we begin to cross species far and wide with each other from distant and long-separated geographical areas of habitat.”
When Renner said this only in the form of an assumption, I. V. Michurin had long ago had a deeply developed scientific theory distant crossing, and on the basis of this theory he created many new wonderful fruit plants. With the help of distant crossing, I. V. Michurin not only combined the ability of an aquatic organism to produce fruits of the required high qualities with the ability to resist harsh winter conditions. The organisms obtained in this way were more flexible in adapting to new living conditions and more malleable in altering their nature.
Plants were not always amenable to distant hybridization. Then I.V. Michurin, who deeply understood the nature of plants, forced them to do this using his original methods:
- pollen mixtures,
- vegetative rapprochement,
- introduction of an intermediary.
If during distant (interspecific) hybridization the usually used artificial pollination did not produce results, then I. V. Michurin applied not pure pollen of one particular variety or species to the stigma of the pistil, but a mixture of pollen of many varieties or species and, as a result, achieved fruit set . I.V. Michurin called this technique the “mixed pollen method.” Another method of overcoming interspecific noncrossing, the method of vegetative rapprochement, which was introduced by I.V. Michurin, consists of the following. I.V. Michurin grafts cuttings of plants that do not cross through pollination in the usual way, and when flowers develop on the scion, their pollen pollinates the flowers of the rootstock and vice versa. I.V. Michurin called this technique the method of “preliminary vegetative rapprochement,” which then facilitates the sexual reproduction of these forms vegetatively brought together by inoculation.
And finally, in a number of cases, the technique of the “intermediary” turned out to be extremely effective, the essence of which is schematically as follows. If species A does not cross with species B, which crosses with species C, then I.V. Michurin first tries to obtain an AXC hybrid and, if obtained, easily crosses this hybrid with species B; species C was only the “intermediary” through which it was possible to cross the uncrossed forms A and B. Using these and other methods, I. V. Michurin was able to widely cross various species, and sometimes even genera of plants, for example, cherry with bird cherry, peach with almonds, shadberry with quince or pear, etc. I. V. Michurin considered two aspects especially significant in the transformation of living nature: the hybrid origin of plants (from distant crossing) and their young age.
The theory and methods of I.V. Michurin have great creative power. This ingenious transformer of the nature of plants seemed to have made a hole in a thick stone wall, through which poured a whole stream of new wonderful varieties of fruit and berry plants, valuable in quality and hardy to the harsher northern climate.
You stop with surprise in front of this creative power, especially when you remember the old Belgian fruit grower Van Mons, who argued that it takes at least 40 years to develop a new variety of apple trees and spread it.
And how many and what wonderful new fruit plants were created by I.V. Michurin! Here, for example, is the Pepin saffron apple tree. Its fruits are beautifully painted with scarlet painting on a beautiful yellow-saffron background. The pulp is dense, yellowish in color, wonderful wine-sweet, with slight acidity, spicy taste, with subtle aroma. This is a late variety of apple tree, the fruits of which can be stored until May. next year. The tree is tolerant of winter frosts.
But the Chinese anise one. It has exceptional frost tolerance, is extremely fertile and ripens very early. The color of the fruit is light greenish-yellow with a delicate blurry reddish-pinkish blush on sunny side. The pulp is white with green tint, loose, juicy, sweet and sour, wonderful wine taste.
The famous pear "Winter Bera Michurina" is remarkably frost-resistant. The yield is very generous, and the taste of the fruit can be considered equal to the taste of many dessert southern varieties of pears. The “Fertile Michurina” cherry is no less famous: the fruits are dark red, with a smooth shiny skin, the pulp is juicy, with a pleasant sweet and sour taste, the juice is pink. The yield reaches 25 kilograms from one mature tree. The tree's tolerance to winter frosts is outstanding. This cherry is widespread in North America and Canada.
When you leaf through the works of I. V. Michurin, a whole panorama of various fruits passes before your eyes, which beckon with their wonderful taste: apples, pears, northern quince, hybrid mountain ash, cherries, sweet cherries, plums, apricots, intermediary almonds, abundant blackberries, raspberries , four new varieties of grapes, new varieties of the wonderful Far Eastern berry plant actinidia, etc. This is evidence of the wonderful creative power of man. You can feel in him not only a great creator, but also an artist passionately in love with his creations.
I.V. Michurin left us not only new wonderful varieties of fruits, but also the science of how to create them.
Charles Darwin firmly substantiated the very fact of evolution and explained its process, for which he very widely used practical experience agriculture, I.V. Michurin, figuratively speaking, with great courage and great success created evolution in the interests of man and on this basis further developed Darwin's theory. Darwin explained how adaptations arise in animals and plants through hereditary changes and natural selection. And I.V. Michurin gave his theory and method of how to create new plants, especially pliable for adaptation to new living conditions.
Darwin showed how human experience in breeding new varieties of plants and animal breeds could be used to explain the evolution of wild flora and fauna. And I.V. Michurin discovered in wild plants, in these often neglected “Cinderellas,” an inexhaustible source for increasing endurance in order to, by crossing with them, improve the quality of cultivated plants.
I. V. Michurin drew attention to the fact that wild plants in the spontaneous process of evolution, they have accumulated valuable qualities of endurance and fertility. He showed how these qualities, with the help of distant crossing, can be widely used to improve cultivated plants. Soviet scientists are now working on this path, who have set themselves the task of obtaining new varieties of wheat with much higher endurance and fertility by crossing it with wild species of wheatgrass and wild perennial rye.
Under Soviet conditions, the work of I. V. Michurin received an unusually wide outlet in life and practice. For the first time ever world history a real folk culture has been created scientific school in the field of biology. This is the Michurin school. In this school, together with academicians and other scientists by profession, they introduce Michurin’s science into life and together move it forward “completely unknown in scientific world People, simple people, practitioners-innovators." These are amateur Michurinists, Stakhanovites of plant growing, collective farmers-experiments.
Ivan Vladimirovich’s working environment was extremely modest, but it was all inspired by his creativity. There is nothing left to say about the garden. Here, in front of living plants, at every step, from the lips of Ivan Vladimirovich, one could hear entire poems about the great work, living witnesses of which were right there before our eyes.
But the same thing happened in the office. Here Ivan Vladimirovich sits in the corner of his office at his modest desk and stuffs himself with cigarettes. But the tobacco for these cigarettes is special. It was developed by Ivan Vladimirovich himself; he also invented and made a machine for cutting tobacco, which he uses to stuff his cigarettes. And on the wall behind Michurin hangs the aneroid he improved. I.V. Michurin was an inventor at heart. He combined an insatiable, powerful creative thought with golden hands. Ivan Vladimirovich himself, in his address to the XVI Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, wrote: “everything I encountered, I tried to improve: I worked in various branches of mechanics, electricity, improved tools, studied beekeeping. But my favorite work was work on improvement varieties of fruit and berry plants."
Michurin's entire creative life was a powerful impulse towards the future, towards a new, young, better one.
On June 7, 1935, the creator of new life in the world of plants passed away. The grave of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin is located on the square of the city of Michurinsk, not far from the high school, where young Michurin residents are growing up, continuing his work.
The most important works of I. V. Michurin: Results of half a century of work on developing new varieties of fruit and berry plants, M., 1929 (vol. I), 1932 (vol. II); Breeding new improved varieties of fruit and berry plants, M., 1933; Results of sixty years of work on developing new varieties of fruit and berry plants, M., 1936 (4th ed.): Works edited by Academician. B. A. Keller and acad. T. D. Lysenko, M.-L., Selkhozgiz, 1939-1941, vol. I. Principles and methods of work; Vol. II. Descriptions of varieties of fruit and berry plants; Vol. III. Notebooks and diaries; Vol. IV. Various notes and articles not included in the first three volumes.
About I. V. Michurin: Bakharev A.N. and Yakovlev P.N., Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (Life and Creativity), M., 1938; Gorshkov I. S., Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, his life and work, M., 1925; Bakharev A. N., Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (biographical sketch), in volume I Op. I. V. Michurina.