Michurin brought. © Inventions and inventors of Russia
(1855-1935) russian biologist and breeder
Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin was born in the village of Dolgoe, Pronsk district, Ryazan province, and spent most of his life in Kozlov, the county town of the Tambov province.
His parents were impoverished nobles, who had a small plot of land, and all the efforts of the family were directed to feed themselves. From early childhood, Ivan Michurin enjoyed working in the garden.
After graduating from the parish school, the future scientist entered the Pronsk district school. He finished it with a certificate of merit and was admitted to the Ryazan gymnasium for a "state-owned debris". However, he studied there for only two years. He had to leave school due to illness, and also because the authorities refused to grant him subsidies. At this time, his father was completely ruined, and he was unable to pay for his son's education.
To feed himself, Michurin got a job as a mechanic at a railway telegraph, but he still spent all his free time in the garden.
Ivan Michurin's research work began in a tiny front garden near their home. On such a piece of land he could plant only a few fruit trees. Only in 1895 did he manage to buy from the Slobodsky priest a piece of waste land on the bank of the Lesnoy Voronezh river. There he began to put his experiences.
On his piece of land, Michurin sows with his own hands, plant, slides, and conducts extensive experimental research; he achieves rapid rooting of cuttings, tests a different composition for smearing cuts.
Russian gardeners of that time were fond of plant acclimatization — apples and other fruit crops from warm countries of Western Europe were relocated to our harsh lands. But Ivan Michurin was convinced from his own experience that it was a waste of time: if cherished varieties had yielded tasty fruits in the first years, then in the end all the same they degenerated. It was impossible to create newcomers the necessary climatic conditions for their full development, under the influence of which these varieties were created. It is impossible to mechanically transfer a plant from one climate to another. At the same time, Ivan Michurin found that plants at a young age are easier to change the external environment. Therefore, a new plant as a future variety from its inception should grow and develop in those conditions in which it will have to live for many years. Michurin finds zoning varieties.
But in order for new, acquired properties to be transmitted to offspring, it was necessary to overcome the old heredity, or, as Michurin said, “shatter the heredity”. And according to the scientist, it was possible to do this through a coherent system of the selection process, which combines three main links: hybridization, the impact of environmental conditions on developing hybrids and selection.
Having placed hybridization in the center of his breeding system, Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin paid special attention to the selection of parental pairs. He argued that if you cross geographically distant plants and raise their offspring in conditions alien to both parents, none of the qualities of the parents will prevail. In the hybrid will form new properties and qualities. That is how Michurin created his wonderful winter variety of pear. Bere winter Michurin. The flowers are very frost-resistant Ussuri pear growing in the Far East, he pollinated with Bereroyal pollen grown in Western Europe. From the Ussuri pear hybrid obtained frost resistance, and from Bereroyal - excellent fruit taste and ability to persist for a long time.
Using hybridization, Ivan Michurin considered it necessary to “cultivate” a new variety, that is, to influence him in one way or another, forcing him to change some qualities and acquire others.
Strong influence on the emerging hybrid plant has a special vaccination, called Michurin method of the mentor, or educator. The essence of the method was that the hybrid seedling was grafted by grafting with varieties that had the desired qualities. As a result, the seedling develops at the expense of plastic substances produced by the rearing plant, i.e. the mentor. Ivan Michurin has developed special methods for overcoming insecticide in plants with distant hybridization. These methods include the pre-vegetative approach method, the mediator method and the pollination method with a pollen mixture.
His hybridization methods became classical and were the beginning of the movement of many southern cultures to the north.
But the discovery of these methods and their justification required a truly selfless labor from a scientist.
After the victory of the October Revolution, Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin was created the necessary conditions for large-scale and fruitful scientific work. This allowed the great biologist to expand experimental studies many times. Later in the city of Kozlov on the basis of his nursery, which occupied nine acres, the All-Union Center for Scientific and Industrial Horticulture and Plant Growing was organized. A city Kozlov renamed Michurinsk.
The significance of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin in the history of plant breeding is quite large: despite the limited nature of individual conclusions, his vast experience in caring for plants is important for modern researchers and especially for amateur gardeners.
Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (1855-1935)
We cannot wait for favors from nature, to take them from her is our task. "" He who does not own 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 art of creating a new life, cultivating new wonderful varieties of fruits, berries and flowers. It was truly a restless, greedy transformer of nature, the creator of a new life, who set himself the goal of renewing the earth.The life of Ivan V. Michurin is real th scientific labor feat.
Ivan Vladimirovich was born in the village of Dolgoe, Pronskoy district, Ryazan province on October 27, 1855. Great-grandfather, grandfather and father of Michurin were lovers of fruit growing. In the former Kaluga province, where the ancestors of Michurin used to live, Michurin pears bred by one of these ancestors are still known.
In order to achieve great things in life, it is very essential to set a big goal for yourself, to feel your life vocation early and then persistently with all the strength of will to follow this calling, to go towards your life goal.
Michurin found his life vocation early. He wrote: "... I, as I remember myself, always and completely absorbed only by one desire to grow these or other plants, and such a passion was so strong that I almost did not even notice many other details of life: they seemed everyone passed by me and left almost no marks in their memory. "
I. Michurin managed to graduate from the Pronsk district school and enter the Ryazan gymnasium. But he was soon expelled from the gymnasium under the pretext of "disrespect" to the authorities, but in fact because this authorities demanded a bribe and did not receive it. I. V. Michurin dreamed of higher education, but he did not manage to finish even high school. Nineteen-year-old Michurin was forced to become a clerk of a commodity office at the Kozlov station of the Ryazan-Ural railway with a monthly salary of 12 rubles.
In 1874, I. V. Michurin married the daughter of the worker, Alexander Vasilyevna Petrushina. This led him to break with his parents - impoverished noblemen, who were indignant at such a choice of their son. Almost in poverty began his independent life Ivan Ivanovich. But the modest railway clerk, abandoned by fate in 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 affairs of gardening and its needs in the localities of the middle part of Russia, after I traveled and examined all the outstanding gardens and gardens at that time, as well as on the basis of personal tests of the qualities and properties of fruit trees suitable for culture in the middle and northern parts of the former European Russia, I came to the conclusion in 1888 that the state of our gardening was too low ... The extreme necessity of development became obvious making a huge improvement in the assortment of our gardens by replenishing them with more productive varieties of better quality, which in 1888 forced me to establish a garden nursery with the exclusive goal of breeding new, better and more productive varieties of fruit plants. "
It began with a tiny front garden near a house in the city. Here, on a small piece of land, I. V. Michurin could only breed a small number of fruit trees. Only in 1895, Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin was able to save money to buy a manor outside the city, where, together with his wife, he carried his expensive plants in his arms. From the work diaries of Ivan Vladimirovich it is clear how widely and with what energy he developed his creative activity here.
Here is the record: "The crops of 1887". It shows from it that I. V. Michurin worked in the most intense way on a multitude of plants. Here and fruit and berry - pears, apples, cherries, plums and peaches; here and vegetables - melons, watermelons; here both floral and ornamental - carnations, primroses, gladioli, petunias, begonias, gloxinia, cyclamens, kali-stegias, lilies, dahlias, daffodils, etc .; All listed plants are of different varieties. In the same record there are various palms, dragon, magnolia, camellia, sago, eucalyptus, lemon, orange, orange, cedar, Engelman spruce, etc.
I. V. Michurin - the tester of nature, who is insatiable in his quest - sows, plants, and grafts with his own hands; conducts extensive experimental research; achieves a good quick ripening of cuttings, tests a different composition for spreading the cuts and a different composition of the substrate in which the cuttings are planted.
The diaries of I. V. Michurin show what difficulties he had to overcome. He plants the cuttings, without laboratory glassware, in jars of kiles and jams, in glasses, in bottles, in a vessel from the Bunsen element. Material concerns all the time hang over the creative work of the researcher. Had to count pennies.
IV Michurin's recording of the “Crops of 1887” took only 8 pages of printed text, but the creative work of a single researcher contained in it could be envied by more than one large research institute with dozens of scientific workers. Meanwhile, I. V. Michurin at this time had to work not only without support, but even in an atmosphere of alienation and hostility to the new cause. With surprising devotion to the idea that had mastered him, squeezed on a small part of 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.
Great was the surprise of the tsarist government, when news of abroad began to come about the Kozlov "crank". "In 1898, the All-Canada Farmers' Congress, which gathered after a harsh winter, stated that all the old cherries of both European and American origin in Canada were frozen, with the exception of" Fertile Michurin "from Kozlov (in Russia)." So wrote Canadian professor Saunders. The fame of new wonderful varieties of fruit plants by I. V. Michurin and in the United States of America has gone. 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. Nevertheless, the very favorable offer of the Americans did not seduce him. He loved his homeland and wanted to transfer the fruits of his work to his people.
Under the influence of news from America, even the thick-skinned tsarist government was worried. It awarded I.V. Michurin with a cross of the "St. Anna" of the 3rd degree "for merits in the agricultural field", but I.V. Michurin had no real support in his most valuable creative work. Meanwhile, old age was coming.
In 1914, at the age of about 60 years, this man with an iron will broke out the bitter words: "The years are gone and the forces are exhausted, it is extremely offensive to work so many years for the general benefit of a person and not have any security for yourself in old age."
Three years later, the Great October Socialist Revolution came. I. Michurin, who did not leave his kennel during the entire period of the February Revolution, the very next day after the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies took power into their hands, disregarding the continued shooting on the streets, just appeared organized by the county land commissariat and said: "I want to work for the new government."
V.I. Lenin and I.V. Stalin showed great personal care for I.V. Michurin. Twice Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin visited I. Michurin in Kozlov. New research and educational institutions named after Michurin grew up in Kozlov: a breeding and genetic station, the Institute of Northern Fruit Growing, a technical school, a higher school. The very city of Kozlov 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 belonged to those "eccentrics" who, in the words of Maxim Gorky, adorn the world. He wanted the south to "move" to the north. He wanted somewhere in the Voronezh or Tambov gubernia and even further north to winter-hardy varieties of apples, pears, plums, grapes and other plants with fruits no worse than the beautiful southern varieties.
Creative researches of Ivan Vladimirovich were under construction on two main bases. He himself created and developed these foundations and filled them with his original Michurin content. These bases are distant crossing and nurturing of plants.
Distant hybridization or distant hybridization is called remote because they interbreed with each other and produce offspring of two parent plants, distant in their kinship in evolution and in their geographic origin.
There is a southern variety of apple trees - Belfleur yellow American. He has large tasty fruits. In addition, they mature late and can persist for a long time in winter. But Bellefleur apple tree does not have sufficient winter hardiness. I. V. Michurin sets himself the task of obtaining a new variety of apple trees, in which the fruit would be no worse than Belfleur, but the tree itself would endure the winter well. For this, I. V. Michurin fertilizes Belfleur with pollen from a Chinese apple tree. The Chinese apple tree is related to the wild Siberian apple tree and is very winter-hardy, but its fruits are very small (they go for jam called "heavenly apples").
Belfleur American and Chinese apple trees are distant and related, as 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 derived his new variety Belfleur-Kitayka. But for the breeding of this variety, the scientist had to work a lot.
When a young apple tree grown from a seed in the seventh year of life bore the first fruits, they matured relatively early - in August, but they were not large enough. To improve the properties of the fruits, I. V. Michurin used the method of "mentor", i.e. the educator, the essence of which is that, wanting to get hybrid varieties with desirable properties, the gardener plants the hybrid of the variety to the crown in the crown , the properties of which he wants to pass on to hybrid fruits. The transplanted stalk influences the hybrid plant, as if raising it in the desired direction. Hence the name of this method. I. V. Michurin planted in the crown of this young apple tree as mentors, or educators, cuttings of the mother type of American Belfleur. This, indeed, had an impact on the young apple tree, and it began to bear ripe fruits later and larger ones. But I. V. Michurin was not satisfied with this. He has planted to his tree still cuttings of winter varieties of apple trees with lying fruits.
As a result of all this, the weight of the fruits in the new variety has risen from 154 to 222 grams, and the time of ripening has shifted by about 90 days. Later, I. V. Michurin brought the weight of the fruits of the belfleur-chinese to 340 grams. This variety Belfleur Kitaiki turned out to be quite resistant to frost in the Ivanovo region, 500 kilometers north of the city of Michurinsk. In its beauty and taste Belfleur-Kitayka is not inferior to the parent plant - Belfleru yellow American. Under good storage conditions, the fruits in the winter season can be preserved until February, without at all losing their taste. Distant hybridization was only the beginning of the work of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin on the creation of this variety. At the same time, the methods of upbringing used by him were very important.
Why was it necessary to distant crossing? When interbreeding closely related small varieties living in the same area, one cannot achieve major changes. Only very limited minor improvements will be made. And with distant crossing, one can go far beyond these small improvements. It is characteristic that at distant crosses 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 local climate conditions and, when crossed with plants from other places, inhibit the properties of these plants, including the valuable qualities of their fruits.
Ivan Vladimirovich advanced and proved the position that "the farther apart are the pairs of crossed plant-producers at their place of birth and their environmental conditions, the easier hybrid seedlings will adapt to the environmental conditions in the new terrain."
IV Michurin began to apply the method of distant crossing from 1884. This remarkable discovery by I. V. Michurin for a long time was not understood by the theoretical science of heredity and variation — by genetics. Only in September 1923, at the meeting of the German society of heredity, the famous geneticist Renner said: "Maybe we will have more success if we cross and cross across species from remote and long-standing geographic areas."
When Renner said this only in the form of an assumption, I. V. Michurin had a long time ago developed a deeply developed scientific theory of distant crossing, and he created many new wonderful fruit plants based on this theory. With the help of distant crossing, I. V. Michurin did not only combine the ability of the aquatic organism to produce the fruits of the necessary high qualities with the ability to resist the harsh winter conditions. The organisms obtained in this way were more flexible in adapting to the new conditions of life and more flexible in adapting their nature.
Plants did not always succumb to distant hybridization. Then I. V. Michurin, who deeply understood the nature of plants, forced them to do it using his original methods:
- pollen blends
- vegetative convergence,
- introducing a mediator.
If at distant (interspecific) hybridization the artificial pollination usually used did not give results, then I. V. Michurin applied not pure pollen of one sort 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 . This technique I. Michurin called the "method of mixed pollen." Another method of overcoming interspecific non-crossing - the method of vegetative rendezvous, which was introduced by I. V. Michurin, consists of the following. Cuttings of plants that do not intersect through the pollination of plants I.V. Michurin inoculates in the usual way, and when flowers develop on the graft, their pollen pollinates the flowers of the rootstock and vice versa. I.V. Michurin called this technique the method of "preliminary vegetative rendezvous", which then facilitates the sexual reproduction of these vegetatively approximated by prizivny forms.
And, finally, the reception of the “intermediary” proved to be extremely effective in some cases, the essence of which is schematically the following. If type A does not interbreed with type B, which intersects with type C, then I. V. Michurin first tries to get a hybrid AX and, if received, easily crosses this hybrid with type B; type C was only the “intermediary” through which it was possible to cross the uncrossed forms A and B. With the help of these and other methods, I. V. Michurin succeeded in widely crossing various species, and sometimes even genera of plants, for example, cherry with bird cherry, peach with almond, irgu with quince or pear, etc. I. Michurin considered two things to be especially significant in transforming wildlife: the hybrid origin of plants (from distant crossing) and their young age.
The theory and methods of I. V. Michurin possess great creative power. This brilliant transducer of the nature of plants seemed to break through a thick stone wall, through which a whole stream of new wonderful varieties of fruit and berry plants, valuable in quality and hardy to a more severe northern climate, rushed.
Surprisingly, you stop in front of this creative power, especially when you remember the old Belgian fruit grower Van-Mons, who argued that it took at least 40 years to develop a new apple variety and spread it.
And how many and what wonderful new fruit plants did I. V. Michurin create! Here, for example, apple Pepin saffron. Its fruits are beautifully painted with scarlet painting on a beautiful yellow-saffron main background. The flesh is dense, yellowish, wonderful wine-sweet, with a light acid, spicy taste, with a delicate aroma. This is a late sort of apple tree, the fruits of which can be preserved until May of the next year. The tree is hardy for winter frosts.
But China anise. It has exceptional resistance to frost, is extremely fertile and ripens very early. The color of the fruit is light greenish-yellow with a delicate blurry reddish-pinkish blush on the sunny side. The flesh is white with a green tinge, friable, juicy, sweet-sour and beautiful wine taste.
The famous pear "Bera winter Michurin" is remarkably resistant to frost. The yield is very generous, and the taste of the fruit can be considered equal to the taste of many southern varieties of dessert pears. The "Fertile Michurin" cherry is no less famous: the fruits are dark-red, with a smooth shiny skin, the flesh is juicy, of a pleasant sweet-sour taste, the juice is pink. Productivity reaches 25 kilograms from one adult tree. The tree's endurance to winter frost is outstanding. This cherry is widespread in North America and Canada.
When you leaf through the writings of I. V. Michurin, a whole panorama of various fruits that beckon with their wonderful taste passes through your eyes: apples, pears, northern quince, mountain ash hybrid, cherries, cherries, plums, apricots, almond middle-aged, blackberry, abundant, raspberries , four new grape varieties, new varieties of the wonderful Far Eastern berry plant actinidia, etc. This is evidence of the wonderful creative power of man. It feels 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 the practical experience of agriculture was widely used, I. V. Michurin, figuratively speaking, with great courage and great success created evolution in the interests of man and on this basis 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 to adapt to new conditions of life.
Darwin showed how human experience in breeding new varieties of plants and animal breeds is used to explain the evolution of the wild plant and animal world. And I. V. Michurin discovered in wild plants, in these often neglected "Cinderella," an inexhaustible source for increasing their endurance so that by crossing with them and improving the quality of cultivated plants.
I. V. Michurin drew attention to the fact that wild plants in the spontaneous process of evolution 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. Now Soviet scientists are 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 wheat grass and wild perennial rye.
In Soviet conditions, the work of I. V. Michurin received an unusually broad way into life, into practice. For the first time in the history of the world, a real folk science school has been created in the field of biology. This is the Michurin school. In this school, together with academicians and other scientists by profession, they introduce the Michurin science into life and together move it forward "people completely unknown in the scientific world, ordinary people, practicing innovators." These are the Michurinist amateurs, the Stakhanovist plant growing, the collective farmers experienced.
The working environment of Ivan Vladimirovich was exceptionally modest, but all of it was fanned by his work. Already nothing to talk about the garden. Here, in front of living plants, at every step, from the mouth of Ivan Vladimirovich, one could hear entire poems about great work, whose living witnesses were here before my eyes.
But it was the same in the office. Here sits Ivan Vladimirovich in the corner of the office at his modest writing desk and stuffing himself with cigarettes. But tobacco is special for these cigarettes. Ivan Vladimirovich himself brought him out, he invented and made a machine for cutting tobacco, with which he stuffed his cigarettes. And on the wall behind Michurin hangs an aneroid improved by him. I. V. Michurin was an inventor in the shower. It combines an unquenchable powerful creative thought with golden hands. Ivan Vladimirovich himself in his address to the XVI Congress of the CPSU (b) wrote: "I tried to improve everything that I came across: I worked in different branches of mechanics, electricity, improved tools, studied beekeeping. But my favorite work was to improve varieties of fruit plants. "
The whole creative life of Michurin was a powerful impulse to the future, to the new, young, better.
On June 7, 1935, the creator of a new life in the plant world passed away. The grave of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin is located on the square of the city of Michurinsk, not far from the high school, in which the staff of young Michurins who continue his work grow.
The main works of I. V. Michurin: Results of half a century of work on the breeding of new varieties of fruit and berry plants, Moscow, 1929 (t. I), 1932 (t. II); Breeding new improved varieties of fruit and berry plants, M., 1933; Results of sixty years of work on the breeding of new varieties of fruit plants, Moscow, 1936 (4th ed.): Works edited by Acad. B. A. Keller and Acad. T. D. Lysenko, M.-L., Selkhozgiz, 1939-1941, t. I. Principles and methods of work; t. ii. Descriptions of varieties of fruit and berry plants; t. iii. Notebooks and diaries; t. iv. Various notes and articles not included in the first three volumes.
About I. V. Michurine: Bakharev A.N. and Yakovlev P.N., Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (Life and Work), M., 1938; Gorshkov I. S., Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, his life and work, M., 1925; Bakharev A.N., Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (biographical sketch), in vol. I Soch. I.V. Michurin.
Russian biologist and breeder, author of many varieties of fruit crops, Doctor of Biology, Honored Worker of Science and Technology, Honorary Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1935), Academician of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935). He was awarded the Order of St. Anne 3rd degree (1913), Lenin (1931) and the Red Banner of Labor. Three lifetime editions of collected works.
Ivan Michurin's great-grandfather Ivan Naumovich and grandfather Ivan Ivanovich Michurin were petty nobles and participants in the Patriotic War of 1812. I.V. Michurin continued the family tradition, since not only his father, Vladimir Ivanovich, but his grandfather, Ivan Ivanovich, as well as his great-grandfather, Ivan Naumovich, were keenly interested in gardening and gathered a rich collection of fruit trees and a library of agricultural literature.
“Is it possible for me to inherit a transmission from my grandfather (Ivan Ivanovich), who put a lot of personal work in breeding a large garden ...: in the Ryazan province, or perhaps even from his great-grandfather (Ivan Naumovich), also a famous gardener who lived in Kaluga province, where So far, there are several varieties of pears called Michurinsky, and, perhaps, the personal example of a father who also worked a lot to grow his own garden - influenced me very much in early childhood ”,
Michurin, 1914
Father I. V. Michurin, Vladimir Ivanovich, received his home education. He served at the Tula Arms Factory as a weapon receiver. He retired with the rank of provincial secretary, and settled in his estate "Vershina", where he was engaged in gardening and beekeeping. He was associated with the Free Economic Society, from which he received literature and seeds of agricultural crops. In winter and autumn, Vladimir Ivanovich taught literacy to peasant children at home.
Mother Maria Petrovna, distinguished by poor health, became ill with fever and died at the age of thirty-three, when I. V. Michurin was four years old.
V. B. Govorukhin and L. P. Peregudova claim that Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin was born as the seventh child, and his brothers and sisters died as children.
The boy worked with his father in the garden, apiary, planting and vaccinations. At the age of eight, he was perfectly able to produce budding, copulation, plant ablation.
He studied first at home, and then in the Pronsk district school of the Ryazan province, devoting free and vacation time to work in the garden. On June 19, 1872, he graduated from the Pronsk district school, after which the father prepared his son for entering the St. Petersburg Lyceum in the gymnasium.
At this time, the father suddenly fell ill. N. A. Makarova claims that he was damaged by reason and was treated in Ryazan.
The estate was mortgaged and gone for debts. Uncle, Lev Ivanovich, helped Michurin to decide on the Ryazan provincial gymnasium. The aunt, who experienced material difficulties, Tatyana Ivanovna, who was also enthusiastically engaged in gardening, took care of Ivan Vladimirovich.
Michurin was expelled from the gymnasium in 1872 for "disrespect for the authorities." A. N. Bakharev, in a biographical reference in Michurin’s book, argues that the reason for the exclusion was a case when, greeting the gymnasium director in the street, the high-school student Michurin "did not manage to take off his hats in front of him because of the severe frost and illness", the real reason he calls the refusal of his uncle, Lev Ivanovich, to bribe the director of the gymnasium of Orange.
In 1872, Michurin moved to Kozlov (later Michurinsk), the neighborhood of which he did not leave for a long time almost until the end of his life.
At the end of 1872, I. V. Michurin received a place as a commercial clerk at the Kozlov Station Commodity Office (Ryazan-Ural Railway, later - Michurinsk Station, Moscow-Ryazan Railway), with a salary of 12 rubles per month and a 16-hour working day.
In 1874, Michurin held the position of cashier, and then one of the assistants to the head of the same station. According to the biographer A. Bakharev, the post of assistant station chief Michurin lost due to a conflict (“caustic mockery”) with the station chief Everling.
From 1876 to 1889, Michurin is a watchman and signaling machine assembler on the Kozlov-Lebedyan railway section.
In 1874 he married Alexander Petrushina, the daughter of a working distillery.
“Married on August 28, 1874 to Kozlov’s bourgeoisie Alexandra Vasilyevna Petrushina, born in 1858. From this marriage I have two children: the son of Nicholas, who was born in 1876, and the daughter Maria, who was born in 1877. "
Having a shortage of funds, Michurin opened a watch workshop in his city, at his apartment. According to A. Bakharev, “on his return from duty, Michurin had to sit long after midnight, repairing watches and repairing various devices”.
Free time I. V. Michurin devoted to the creation of new varieties of fruit and berry crops.
In 1875, he rented a vacant urban estate in the vicinity of Kozlov with an area of 130 square meters for 3 rubles a month. sazhey (about 500 sq. meters) "with a small part of the neglected garden", where he began to conduct experiments on plant breeding. There he collected a collection of fruit and berry plants in more than 600 species. “Soon the estate I rented,” he wrote, “was so overcrowded with plants that there was no further opportunity to do business with it.”
“For 5 years, there’s nothing to think about acquiring land. And the costs, if possible, should be reduced to the extreme. And after the sale of a part of vaccinations and dicks, on the sixth (i.e., in 1893) approximately 5,000 pieces, for an amount of 1,000 rubles (i.e., 20 kopecks), you can also purchase land, fence it, and plant it. .. Plant between the trees and over the fence. Considering 4 inches for each plant, you can hold out for three years. ”
I.V. Michurin, in his diary for 1887
In early autumn, Michurin goes to an apartment in the Lebedevs' house, on Moskovskaya street, with a manor and a garden. According to the testimony of a contemporary of Michurin, I. A. Gorbunov, two years later, Michurin purchased this house with a bank with the help of a bank, which he immediately pledged due to lack of funds and large debts for 18 years. On this estate, Michurin produced the first varieties: raspberry Commerce (seedling of the Colossal Schaefer), cherries Pear-shaped Griot, Small-leaved semi-dwarf, Fertile and interspecific hybrid sorts of cherry The beauty of the north (Vladimir cherries × White Cherry white). Here he moved the entire collection of garden plants from the estate Gorbunov. But after a few years, this manor was overflowing with plants.
In the early autumn of 1887, Michurin learned that the priest of the suburban suburb of Panskoe, the Hawks, was selling a piece of land seven kilometers from the city at the Turmasovo settlement, under Kruchyu, on the bank of the Voronezh River. Of the 12 1/2 dessiatines (about 13.15 hectares) of the plot, only half could go, as the other half was under the river, a precipice, a bush and other inconvenience, but Michurin was very pleased with the site. Due to a shortage of funds, the transaction was delayed until February 1888. A. Bakharev asserts that “All autumn and much of the winter of 1887-1888. went to the feverish earning of money in case of unbearable, exhausted labor. ” On May 26, 1888, the purchase of land took place, after which 7 rubles remained at Michurin’s disposal and large debts for half the land. Due to lack of funds, the plants from the urban area were carried by the Michurins for 7 km on their shoulders. Since the new site was not at home, we went for 14 km on foot, and for two seasons we lived in a hut. The work of the fitter Michurin was forced to continue for another year. Since 1888, this area near the suburb Turmasovo became one of the first breeding nurseries in Russia. Subsequently, it is the central estate of the state farm-garden. I. V. Michurin, with an area of 2500 hectares of gardens with Michurinsky assortment.
In 1893-1896, when there were already thousands of hybrid seedlings of plum, sweet cherry, apricot and grapes in the nursery at Turmasovo, Michurin was convinced that the method of acclimatization by vaccination was unsuccessful, and concludes that the soil of the nursery is a powerful black soil, is fat and " indulges "hybrids, making them less resistant to the devastating for heat-loving varieties" Russian winter ".
In 1900, Michurin moved the plantations to a site with poorer soils "to ensure the" Spartan "education of hybrids."
In 1906, the first scientific works of I. V. Michurin, devoted to the problems of breeding new fruit trees, were published.
In 1912 he was awarded the Order of St. Anne 3rd degree.
In 1913, he refused the offer of the US Department of Agriculture to move to America or sell his collection of plants.
In 1915, ill with cholera, his wife died.
In 1934, a genetic laboratory was created on the basis of the nursery of Michurin, now - the Central Genetic Laboratory named after. I. V. Michurin (CGL of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences), is developing methods for breeding new varieties of fruit crops, breeding work. As a result of the fruitful activity of the scientist, the city of Michurinsk turned into an all-Russian center of horticulture, later on there also appeared the Research Institute of Fruit Growing named after him. Michurin, Michurin State Agrarian University. Michurinsky district has large fruit nurseries and fruit farms.
Contribution to science
He developed methods for the selection of fruit plants, mainly the method of distant hybridization (selection of parental pairs, overcoming incapacity, etc.).
Michurin Ivan Vladimirovich biography brief the famous scientist, biologist, founder of the scientific selection of berry, fruit and other crops in the USSR is presented in this article.
Ivan Michurin brief biography
Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, a well-known scientist biologist, breeder was born on October 27, 1855 in the Ryazan province into the family of a provincial retired secretary, a petty nobleman.
First, Michurin studied at home, later he entered the Pronsk district school, which he graduated in 1872. In the same year he became a student of the 1st Ryazan Classical Gymnasium, however, for disrespect to the authorities he was excluded from it. Ivan Vladimirovich moved to the city of Kozlov, in the Tambov province.
In the new city, he got a job at the railway station, where he worked from 1872 to 1876. First, he served as a commercial clerk of the commodity office, later became a commodity cashier and assistant station manager.
In 1874 he married Petrushina Alexander, the daughter of a worker in a distillery. They married two children in marriage with her - Nikolay and Maria.
Experiencing a shortage of finances, Michurin opened a watch workshop in his apartment. In his spare time he was engaged in the creation of new types of fruit and berry crops. To this end, Ivan Vladimirovich in 1875 rents a plot of land in Kozlov and makes attempts to develop new varieties of berry and fruit crops, and also collects a collection of plants.
In 1888, Michurin acquired a new plot of land on the outskirts of the city, much more than the previous one - about 13 hectares, and, having transferred his plants there, he works on his plantation until the end of his life. From now on, his plot becomes the first breeding nursery in Russia.
Michurin became famous in 1906, when his first scientific works were published, which covered the problems of breeding varieties of fruit trees. For his work, the scientist received the Order of St. Anna III degree and the sign "For the works on agriculture."
With the advent of the Bolsheviks to power, he begins to cooperate with the new administration and participates in consultations on breeding, raising yields and drought control for agricultural specialists, and also attends agronomic meetings.
In 1923, the nursery Michurin became an institution of national importance. And in 1928 it was reorganized into the Breeding and Genetic Station of fruit and berry crops (since 1934, the Central Genetic Laboratory, named after Michurin).
Michurin Ivan Vladimirovich contribution to science
Ivan Vladimirovich made a huge contribution to the science of genetics, paying special attention to the research of berry and fruit plants. He is considered the founder of the scientific selection of crops. He developed the theory and practical techniques in the field of remote hybridization.
Michurin was an experimenter, an honorary member of the USSR AS, a full member of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He created more than 300 species of new plants.
For his achievements, he was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1931, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1932.
I.V. Michurin began his first experiments with fruit plants as a twenty-year-old youth (in 1875), renting a vacant lot in Kozlov with a small garden. The source of the means for life and scientific work was the watch workshop opened by him. In 1888, he acquired a small plot of land outside the city and, unable to transport his plants to hire a horse, he transferred them to a new place (seven kilometers away) on his shoulders and the shoulders of his family members. And it was already a feat! In addition, I. V. Michurin created a garden not for commercial activities - growing and selling old, well-known varieties, but for breeding new, improved ones. And this is an endless, exhausting work and an equally endless waste of money for the purchase of plants, books, inventory ... And the result? The result must be waited for years and believe, believe, believe ... Believe in the rightness and rightness of the business, believe in the correctness of the chosen path. But the cultivation of a variety is often delayed for dozens of years (for example, the winter Bere variety I. V. Michurin created a pear variety for 36 years), and sometimes there is not enough human life.
In 1900, I. V. Michurin moved with all his green pets - for the third and last time - to the valley of the Voronezh River, to a site more suitable for experiments. Now here is the V. Michurin Museum-Reserve, and next to it is a magnificent building and gardens of the Central Genetic Laboratory (CGL) created during the lifetime of the scientist, which has now been transformed into the All-Russian Research Institute of Genetics and Breeding of Fruit Plants (VNIIGiSPR) and bears the name I.V. Michurin.
I. Michurin fulfilled his plans in his youth. Our country has received more than 300 high-quality varieties of fruit and berry crops. But the matter is not in the number and variety of the varieties he received. In the end, now not much is being kept from them in the gardens and besides in limited quantities. According to the apple-tree, this is the Bellefle Chinese, Slavyanka, Pepin saffron, Chinese early gold, in a large number Bessemyanka Michurinskaya. Of pear varieties in the gardens of the Black Earth zone, Berezhnaya Michurina Berexia is preserved. The greatness of I. V. Michurin in the fact that even at the end of the XIX century, he foresightly determined the main direction of selection, armed scientists with strategy and tactics of its implementation, became the founder of scientific selection (and, by the way, not only fruit, but also other cultures). And its varieties became the forefathers of new, even more improved varieties (for example, Bellefle-Kitaika spawned 35 varieties, Pepin saffron - 30), which, of course, largely replaced their predecessors.
Portrait I.V. Michurin. Artist A.M. Gerasimov
But not immediately I. V. Michurin found the right ways in creating varieties. He did not have anyone to learn, he had to develop everything himself. There were many mistakes, disappointments, severe failures, but he persevered in his work. And this is a feat of a lifetime!
At the end of the 19th century, it was widely believed in Russia that the improvement of the varietal composition of middle belt gardens can be accomplished by mass transfer of high-quality southern varieties here and their gradual adaptation to the harsh local climate. Gardeners lost many years and a lot of money on this useless business. And this mistake, by the way, is still being repeated by many of our compatriots.
At first, YV Michurin succumbed to the temptation of such acclimatization. And years of fruitless work will pass before the scientist, after analyzing the results of the experiments, concludes that the adaptability of old, already established varieties to new conditions is extremely limited, and it is impossible to acclimatize such varieties by simply transferring them with trees or grafts cuttings to a winter-hardy stock. It is quite different when sowing seeds. In this case, the impact of new conditions does not fall on seedlings - established varieties, but young seedlings, extremely plastic plants with a high degree of variability and adaptability. So the decisive conclusion was made: “acclimatization is achievable only when plants multiply by sowing seeds”. And by the way, many of you, dear gardeners, do just that now.
Indeed, the finest hour for breeders (and therefore for all of us, gardeners) was the discovery of I. V. Michurin that a really effective way of moving plants to the north is not sowing any seeds, but obtained from a purposeful selection of hardy parents and, therefore, truly insemination is possible "only by removing new varieties of plants from the seeds."
And how much in this way are enough winter-hardy varieties of southerners already created in our country! Only, for example, in the Moscow Region, sweet cherry, apricot and even quince varieties produce relatively well. Well, grapes are now cultivated, one might say, everywhere, and some varieties even practically and without shelter.
Meeting I. V. Michurin with students of the Moscow Agricultural Academy, 1924
In developing the doctrine of purposeful selection of parental pairs, I. V. Michurin made a fateful discovery: the prospects for breeding in distant hybridization — crossing plants of different species rather distant in kinship and area of growth. Only due to the introduction of I. Michurin into the selection of these scientific developments, for example, has the gardening of Siberia and the Urals become possible. After all, interspecific hybridization has allowed us to get a fundamentally new type of apple tree suitable for these places - ranetki and semi-cultures (hybrids between wild-growing type of berry apple, or simply Siberian, and European varieties), an unprecedented type of pear-tree hybrids between local wild-growing type of pear, called simply in the people - Ussurika and European varieties. All local varieties of stone fruit crops - cherries, plums, apricots - are also interspecific hybrids. Interspecific hybridization saved the gooseberry from destruction by a spirotherek, returned a pear to the gardens of the middle band, and even in an improved form. Most of the varieties of honeysuckle, rowan, stone fruit crops that are common throughout our country are also interspecific hybrids. When I once congratulated the well-known breeder on raspberry Ivan Vasilyevich Kazakov with his wonderful varieties (and above all remontant), he said: "You know, they went somehow unexpectedly and immediately when I introduced interspecific hybridization." And I just had to smile and say: “As recommended by I. V. Michurin.”
House-Museum of I.V. Michurin
And remember, probably, growing in your gardens, the so-called man-made plants that never existed in nature: Russian plum or, otherwise, hybrid cherry plum (hybrids between cherry plum and various types of plum), yoshta (hybrid between currant and gooseberry), dredger (hybrid of strawberry and strawberry), tserapadusy - children of cherry and bird cherry. And this is not a complete list.
And also, probably, few people know that I. V. Michurin determined the selection and the therapeutic direction, urging the breeders to create new varieties to be guided by the need to take into account their curative qualities. He even once wrote that if he had an adamant age, he would have brought out the apple of health. That is why our garden is now becoming a supplier not only, as they say, “products for dessert, but also a saving pharmacy”.
I. V. Michurin was the first to discover almost all cultures for gardening, which are now called non-traditional - new and rare. Most of them he first experienced in his garden. He created the first varieties and determined for each crop a future place in the Russian garden. It is from his light hand that aronia and felted cherry, lemongrass and actinidia are growing in our gardens now, shepherdia and barberry are being urged to go to the garden, varietal rowan, turn, bird cherry, hazel appeared.
Monument I.V. Michurin,
city of Michurinsk
I. V. Michurin was a great connoisseur of plants. In his garden, he collected such a collection that the Americans tried to buy it twice (in 1911 and 1913) - together with the earth and the scientist themselves to ship across the ocean on a steamer. But I. V. Michurin was firm in his refusal. His plants can only live on Russian soil, his business is for Russia.
Most of his life I. V. Michurin fought alone. The years went by, the strength was exhausted, it became harder and harder for him to work in the garden. A joyless, lonely old age and need approached. And, most likely, the work on the transformation of Russian gardening would have been interrupted if I. V. Michurin had not been supported by the Soviet authorities. On February 18, 1922, a telegram arrived in Tambov: “The experiments to obtain new cultivated plants have enormous state significance. Urgently send a report on the experiences and works of Michurin Kozlovsky District to the report to the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Comrade. Lenin. Confirm the execution of the telegram. "
The grave of I.V. Michurin
There was an unprecedented case in the history - the work of one person became the business of the whole country. Across the whole immense country, scientific centers for gardening, breeding, sorting out research were created - institutes, experimental stations, strong points. At the same time, training centers for training personnel were organized - from institutes and technical schools to courses for training garden workers. Already in the early 1930s, the first students of I. V. Michurin traveled throughout the country and in the most varied climatic zones — in the mountains, in the desert, in the steppes, and among the forests — they began to create new varieties. And they, together with I. V. Michurin, created the basis by which our country has no equal for variety and variety of new garden crops. And then this work will be continued by the second and third generation of followers of I. V. Michurin. Thus, the Great Gene Pool of Fruit and Berry Crops of Russia will be created.
Unfortunately, this invaluable legacy in the last 20 years has been largely lost and, due to the commercialization of gardening, has been criminally replaced by foreign, as a hundred years ago wrote I. Michurin, a material unsuitable for our conditions. The scientific work was also curtailed, many collections died under the construction of cottage settlements. The remaining gardens are old, many are neglected. Unfortunately, dear gardeners, not much better at your sites. And yet, according to my observations, you are now - the main holders of our fruit and berry gene pool. Take care and increase this is our great national treasure! And further. Read Ivan Vladimirovich. His books can still be bought from booksellers, ordered online. They are written very clearly, without clutter of scientific terms, and in content - a storehouse of ageless knowledge for amateur gardeners and for specialists.
I.S. Isaeva at the desktop I. V. Michurin.
House-Museum of I. V. Michurin
Keeper of the House-Museum of I. V. Michurin in Michurinsk L. Volokitina
Irina Sergeevna Isaeva,
doctor of agricultural sciences
photos by I.S. Isaeva and from the book N. I. Saveliev
"All-Russiangenetics Research Institute
and breedingfruit plants to them. I.V. Michurin "
Rare historical photos created by personal
a photographerI.V. Michurina V.A. Ivanov.
Published in the book N.I. Savelyev
"All-Russian Research Institute
genetics and selection of fruit plants to them. I.V. Michurin ".
Use of photos is permitted by I.S. Isaeva
author of the book, director of the institute, academician N. I. Saveliev
I. V. Michurin with the famous Russian botanist, academician B. Keller
I. V. Michurin and American Professor
N. Ganzen
I. V. Michurin with Academician N. I. Vavilov
I. V. Michurin for conducting cytological studies
I. V. Michurin with a delegation from Mongolia (early 30s)
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