For 60 years of continuous work, Michurin has bred about 300 varieties of fruit and berry crops
wikipedia.orgFor 60 years of continuous work, he brought out 300 varieties of apple trees, pears, plums, cherries, apricots, grapes and other types of fruit and berry crops. However, the life of a doctor of biology, an honored worker of science and technology, an honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, an academician of VASKhNIL was difficult.
Michurin's ancestors were small landed nobles. Ivan Michurin continued the family tradition, since his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were keenly interested in gardening, collected a rich collection of fruit trees and a library of agricultural literature. Michurin's father, after his resignation, settled in his Vershina estate in the Ryazan province, where he was engaged in gardening and beekeeping.
Ivan was born the seventh child, and his brothers and sisters died as children. Mother Maria Petrovna, who was in poor health, fell ill with a fever and died at the age of thirty-three, when Vanya was four years old. The boy was engaged with his father in the garden, apiary, planting and vaccinations. At the age of eight, he was perfectly able to produce budding, copulation, and ablactation of plants. He studied first at home, and then at the Pronsk district school of the Ryazan province, devoting his free time to working in the garden. On June 19, 1872, he graduated from the Pronskoye district school, after which his father prepared his son for admission to the St. Petersburg Lyceum. But at this time, the father suddenly fell ill: he became mentally ill and was sent to Ryazan for treatment. The estate was mortgaged and gone for debts. Uncle, Lev Ivanovich, helped Michurin decide on the Ryazan provincial gymnasium. However, Michurin was expelled from it for "disrespect for the authorities." The reason was a case when, while greeting the director of the gymnasium on the street, the schoolboy Michurin did not take off his hat in front of him due to severe frost and an ear disease.
In 1872 Michurin moved to the town of Kozlov (subsequently Michurinsk). In order to somehow exist, he worked as a commercial clerk in the goods office of the railway station with a salary of 12 rubles per month and a 16-hour working day. Michurin rose to the rank of assistant head of the station, but he was fired due to a conflict with the head. From 1876 to 1889, Michurin was a fitter of clocks and signaling devices on the section of the Kozlov-Lebedyan railway. In 1874 he married the daughter of a distillery worker. From this marriage two children were born: son Nikolai and daughter Maria.
Due to lack of funds, Michurin opened a watch workshop in his apartment. He devoted his free time to work on the creation of new varieties of fruit and berry crops. In 1875, he rented a city estate in the vicinity of Kozlov for 3 rubles a month, where he began to conduct plant breeding experiments. There he collected a collection of more than 600 species of fruit and berry plants. Soon the leased land was full. Michurin bought the estate with a garden with the help of a bank and immediately mortgaged it due to lack of funds and large debts for 18 years. Here he moved the entire collection of garden plants. But after a few years, this land turned out to be overcrowded. In the early autumn of 1887, Michurin bought a plot seven kilometers from the city. He earned money for it by overwork. Plants from the city plot were carried by members of the Michurin family for seven kilometers on their shoulders. There was no house on the new site, they went there on foot and lived in a hut for two seasons. This site became one of the first breeding nurseries in Russia. Subsequently, it became the central estate of the state farm-garden them. I. V. Michurin, with an area of 2500 hectares of orchards with the Michurin assortment.
In 1893-1896, when the nursery already had thousands of hybrid seedlings of plums, sweet cherries, apricots and grapes, Michurin was convinced of the failure of the method of acclimatization by grafting, and concluded that the soil of the nursery - a powerful black soil - is oily and "spoils" hybrids. In 1900, he moved the plantings 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 varieties of fruit trees, saw the light of day. In the summer of 1915, during the First World War, a cholera epidemic raged in Kozlov. Then Michurin's wife, Alexandra Vasilievna, died. And the second blow - in the same year, a heavy flood in early spring flooded the nursery, after which severe frosts and a drop in water destroyed the school of two-year-olds intended for sale with ice. As a result, many hybrids died.
After the Civil War, Lenin drew attention to Michurin's work and instructed Sereda, People's Commissar for Agriculture, to organize the study of scientific work and practical achievements. The Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR recognized the experimental M. nursery as an institution of national importance. On the basis of the Michurinsky nursery, the Breeding and Genetic Station of fruit and berry crops was organized, which was reorganized into the Central Genetic Laboratory. I. V. Michurina. Michurin died on June 7, 1935 at the age of 80 from stomach cancer.
"Evening Moscow" offers you a selection of interesting facts from the biography of the famous biologist.
1. Michurin could talk for hours with a dying plant, and it would come back to life. He could easily enter any yard and the huge watchdogs did not bark. Moreover, the birds safely landed on his hat, shoulders, palm and pecked at grains.
2. Only at the age of 51 did he start publishing his scientific papers. The popularity of Michurin's methods has stepped beyond the borders of Russia, and the breeder's fruit varieties occupied significant areas in the USA and Canada. In 1898, the All-Canadian Farmers' Congress, which met after a harsh winter, stated that all the old varieties of cherries of both European and American origin in Canada were frozen to death, with the exception of Fertile Michurina from the city of Kozlov.
3. During Michurin's youth, good tobacco was not grown in Russia. The best varieties of yellow Turkish tobacco did not ripen. The breeder set the task of introducing new tobacco varieties into the culture - an earlier ripening period, with a lower percentage of nicotine. From the fertilization of yellow Bulgarian early tobacco with Sumatran small-leaved tobacco, he received a new early-ripening fragrant variety that can ripen not only in the center of Russia, but also in the Urals. He also developed the agricultural technology of tobacco and designed a machine for cutting it.
4. The Dutch, who know a lot about flowers, offered Michurin a lot of money (20 thousand royal rubles in gold) for the bulbs of an unusual lily that looks like a lily and smells like a violet, with the condition that this flower will no longer be grown in Russia. And they offered him big money. Michurin did not sell the lily, although he lived in poverty. On the monument in the center of Michurinsk, the scientist's jacket is buttoned to the "Female" side. Many believe that the sculptor made a mistake. However, Matvey Manizer, to whom the monument was commissioned, sculpted it from photographs. Due to extreme poverty, Michurin turned old clothes himself. He himself sewed mittens, wore shoes until they fell apart. Everything he earned went to pay the workers. There was nothing left for him.
5. In the summer of 1912, the office of Nicholas II sent one of its prominent officials, Colonel Salov, to Kozlov to Michurin. The colonel was surprised by the modest appearance of the Michurin estate, which consisted of a brick outbuilding and a wattle shed, as well as the poor clothes of its owner, whom he first mistook for a watchman. Salov limited himself to reviewing the plan of the nursery, without going into it, and reasoning about the sanctity of "patriotic duty", the slightest deviation from which "borders on sedition." A month and a half later, Michurin received two crosses: Anna of the 3rd degree and the Green Cross "for labors in agriculture."
6. During the civil war, when whites came to the city, he hid the wounded reds in his basement, and vice versa: when the reds came, he hid the wounded whites. How it happened that no one denounced him is a mystery.
7. The day after the October Revolution of 1917, despite the continued shooting in the streets, Michurin appeared at the newly organized county land department and declared: "I want to work for the new government." And she began to help him.
8. In 1918, the People's Commissariat for Agriculture of the RSFSR expropriated Michurin's nursery, however, immediately appointing him the head himself.
9. Michurin's room served as an office, laboratory, library, fine mechanics and optics workshop, and even a forge. Michurin himself invented and designed his own tools: secateurs, barometers, a grafting chisel, an elegant portable apparatus for distilling essential oil from rose petals, a lighter, and a cigarette case. With a special machine, he stuffed cigarettes with tobacco of the "Michurin" variety. He had a unique workshop for making dummies of fruits and vegetables from wax. They were considered the best in the world and were so skillful that others tried to bite them. He forged and soldered all the equipment using a furnace of his own design.
10. Neighbors loved and feared Ivan Vladimirovich at the same time. The glory of a healer and a sorcerer was entrenched in him among the people. He knew many herbs that have medicinal properties, prepared all kinds of ointments and decoctions from them, healed migraine, mumps, renal colic, furunculosis, heart failure, even cancer, removed stones from the kidneys. He had the ability to influence the growth of plants and the behavior of people. It used to be that he walked with a cane and showed: “Leave this one, this one and this one, throw out the rest.” Out of 10,000 seedlings, by some instinct I determined two or three. His assistants, secretly from him, tried to replant the seedlings he had rejected, but none took root.
11. The so-called "chokeberry" is not a mountain ash (Sorbus), but an chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa), also from the "Pink" family. Bred by Ivan Michurin at the end of the 19th century as a special variety of black chokeberry, with a different set of chromosomes. So chokeberry is not exactly chokeberry, but it is not rowan at all.
12. Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin was unlucky even after his death. He died Michurin at the age of 80 from stomach cancer. He bequeathed to bury himself next to the house, but it was not fulfilled mainly because in the spring everything around is flooded with flood waters. He rests next to the agricultural institute, created by him and from which the Soviet government removed his name. They also wanted to rename the city, but the residents opposed it. Kozlov was not known to anyone, but Michurinsk was known to everyone.
MICHURINSKY QUOTATION
"We cannot wait for favors from nature; it is our task to take them from her!"
"Gardening ... is one of the most beneficial occupations for the health of the population and the most productive in terms of profitability, not to mention its ennobling and softening effect on the character of a person, after field cultivation."
"The human brain originated from the walnut."
NAMED IN HONOR OF I.V. MICHURINA:
Plant species (Aronia mitschurinii A.K. Skvortsov & Maitul) - Aronia Michurina, or Aronia
Settlements: In 1932, the city of Kozlov, during the life of Ivan Vladimirovich, was renamed Michurinsk.
In 1968, the working settlement of the builders of the Ryazanskaya GRES was named Novomichurinsk.
The village of Michurovka, Pronsky district, Ryazan region, is named after his ancestors, the former owners of the village.
State farm named after Michurin in the Novosibirsk region of the Novosibirsk region.
State farm named after Michurin in the Michurinsky district of the Tambov region.
Michurino village in Kazakhstan, Astana.
Michurino village, Drochia region, Moldova.
Agricultural educational institutions:
Agricultural College. I.V. Michurin in the city of Michurinsk, Tambov region, which was founded on the initiative of the breeder.
Agrarian University. Michurin in the city of Michurinsk, Tambov Region.
State farm-technical school named after Michurin, Kazakhstan, Karaganda region, Abay district.
Agricultural research institutions:
Central Genetic Laboratory named after I.V. Michurin in the city of Michurinsk, Tambov Region.
All-Russian Institute of Genetics and Breeding of Fruit Plants. I. V. Michurina (VNIIGiSPR).
All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Horticulture. Michurin in the city of Michurinsk, Tambov Region.
Many streets and squares in different cities of the world, namely the Michurin street and collective farm in Mikhailovka (Mikhailovsky district, Zaporozhye region, Ukraine).
Lake and village in the Priozersky district of the Leningrad region.
JOKE ON THE TOPIC:
Somehow Michurin climbed a birch tree for dill, fell down and was covered with apples.
Michurin Ivan Vladimirovich (10/15/27/1855, Vershina estate, Ryazan province 06/07/1935, Michurinsk, Tambov region), Soviet biologist, founder of the scientific selection of fruit, berry and other crops in the USSR; honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1935), academician of VASKhNIL (1935). Born into the family of a small landed nobleman. In 1875, he rented a piece of land in Kozlov (about 500 m 2), where he began work on collecting plant collections and breeding new varieties of fruit and berry crops. In 1899, he acquired a new plot (about 13 hectares) on the outskirts of the city, where he transferred his plants and where he lived and worked until the end of his life.
Only under Soviet rule were Michurin's works appreciated and widely developed. In 1928, on the basis of the Michurinsk nursery, the Breeding and Genetic Station of Fruit and Berry Crops was organized, which in 1934 was reorganized into the Central Genetic Laboratory named after I.I. I. V. Michurina.
Michurin made a great contribution to the development of genetics, especially fruit and berry crops. In the laboratory of cytogenetics organized by him, the structure of cells was studied, experiments were carried out on artificial polyploidy. Michurin studied heredity in connection with the laws 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 phylogenesis of the original forms, on the individual characteristics of hybrids, and also on the conditions of education. In his works, he substantiated the possibility of changing the genotype under the influence of external conditions.
Michurin is one of the founders of the scientific selection of agricultural crops. The most important issues developed by Michurin: intervarietal and distant hybridization, methods of raising hybrids in connection with the patterns of ontogenesis, dominance control, mentor method, evaluation and selection of seedlings, acceleration of the breeding process with the help of physical and chemical factors. Michurin created the theory of selection of initial forms for crossing. He found that the farther the pairs of crossed producing plants are separated from each other in the place of their homeland and the conditions of their environment, the more easily hybrid seedlings adapt to 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 methods of distant hybridization. He proposed methods for overcoming the genetic barrier of incompatibility during distant hybridization: pollination of young hybrids at their first flowering, preliminary vegetative convergence, the use of an intermediary, pollination with a mixture of pollen, and more.
In the 1930s he opposed research in genetics and eugenics.
In the USSR, Michurin varieties are zoned: apple trees Pepin saffron, Slavyanka, Bessemyanka Michurinskaya, Bellefleur-Chinese and others, Bere winter Michurina pears, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Fertile Michurina cherries, etc. , cherries and other southern crops. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
Michurin Ivan Vladimirovich - Russian breeder, gardener - geneticist, author of many varieties of fruit and berry crops, honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1935), academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935), awarded the Order of Lenin (1931) and the Red Banner of Labor, three lifetime editions of collected works.
Michurin was born on October 27 (15), 1855 on the estate of a retired military official in the Ryazan province. He continued the family tradition, since not only his father, Vladimir Ivanovich, but also his grandfather, Ivan Ivanovich, and great-grandfather, Ivan Naumovich, were interested in gardening and collected a rich collection of fruit trees and a library of agricultural literature.
At one time he did not graduate from the gymnasium, he served as a clerk at the railway station, as a mechanic - a handicraftsman. He also did not receive a special agronomic education, he reached everything himself. In 1875 he rented an orchard and took up breeding - the creation of new varieties of fruit and berry and ornamental crops. He brought out more than 300 new varieties of fruit and berry plants, experiments on distant hybridization (crossing of unrelated species) were especially successful. In 1918, the People's Commissariat for Agriculture of the RSFSR expropriated Michurin's nursery, appointing him head. In 1928, a breeding and genetic station was established here, in 1934 - the Central Genetic Laboratory. In 1932, the city of Kozlov was renamed Michurinsk. On June 7, 1935, at the age of 80, Ivan Vladimirovich died.
At the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow, a monument was erected to the great Russian gardener I. V. Michurin. On the pedestal stands a bronze man with a very strict, kind face. He is wearing an old-fashioned coat, leaning on a cane and holding an apple in his hand.
80 years of the most amazing life of Ivan Vladimirovich, a tireless researcher, creator and transformer of nature. He left the following entry: “Only I, as I remember myself, was always and completely absorbed in only one desire for occupations to grow certain plants, and such a passion was so strong that I almost did not even notice many other details of life: they seemed to all passed me by and left almost no trace in my memory.
The great gardener and breeder managed to do so much in 80 years of his life that many more generations will enjoy the fruits of his labor. Plant varieties bred by Michurin have not lost their value. The fame of Michurin's hybrids went around the world. In 1913, the US Department of Agriculture tried to persuade Michurin to move to America or sell his collection of plants, but he refused. He explained it this way: "Mature plants do not take root well in another place, and people even more so."
The Dutch, who know a lot about flowers, offered Michurin a lot of money (20 thousand royal rubles in gold!) For violet lily bulbs (a flower looks like a lily, but smells like a violet!) With the condition that this flower will no longer be grown in Russia. Didn't sell... Michurin's motto: "We can't wait for favors from nature, it's our task to take them from her." This phrase has a continuation: "But nature must be treated with respect and care and, if possible, kept in its original form ..." Michurin was very fond of roses and brought out about thirty new varieties of roses - Prince Varyagov, Prince Rurik, Neptune, Ceres, Tsaritsa Light and others.
Even at the very beginning of gardening, on the basis of personal observations and after a tour of the gardens of the Ryazan, Tula, Kaluga provinces, Ivan Vladimirovich became convinced that the old Russian varieties, due to diseases and pests, gave negligible yields, and the southern ones had to be wrapped up for the winter. There was a threat of the degeneration of Russian varieties, in which case they would have to buy imported apples and pears.
Michurin's work involved over a thousand adult plants and several tens of thousands of young ones, a dozen and a half fruit and berry crops, and several dozen botanical species. In the nursery, he collected a unique collection of plants from different parts of the globe - from the Far East, the Caucasus, Tibet, from China, Canada and other countries.
Having crossed the wild Ussuri pear with the French variety Bere Dil, the scientist received a new variety - Bere winter Michurina. Its fruits are quite tasty, lie until February. In addition, the variety bears fruit annually, the bark is not afraid of burns, the flowers are resistant to morning frosts. It is not for nothing that this variety is still alive and well, as well as others (Michurin has 48 varieties of apple trees, 15 - pears, 33 - cherries and cherries. And some of them have become donors of winter hardiness when new varieties are bred by modern scientists.
Many people know the saffron apple variety Michurin Pepin, which has already celebrated its centenary. It escapes from spring frosts, because it blooms late, after damage by winter frosts it quickly recovers, and regularly bears fruit. The fruits themselves have a dessert taste, sweet, the jam from them is simply wonderful, fresh apples lie until February.
The fruits of another variety that has not yet left the arena, Bellefleur-Chinese, retain their qualities less. Although its winter hardiness is not entirely sufficient for cultivation in the Moscow region, it is possible to graft another variety of cuttings into the crown. Then the Chinese Bellefleur will not freeze. The main thing for any apple tree is fruits, and in this variety they have an unusually strong aroma and a wonderful refreshing taste.
If the site is located in a place where cold winds flow, where the apple tree is uncomfortable in summer and cold in winter, Bessemyanka Michurinskaya will help out. The fruits, ripening in mid-August, lie until January. Their taste is sweet and sour with aroma. Under unfavorable conditions, another Michurin variety is able to bear fruit - Kitayka golden early. Small golden yellow apples ripen in early August, but are stored for no more than 10 days. Slavyanka, Renet bergamot, Pepin-Chinese, Pendant-Chinese, Komsomolets - these are a few more Michurin varieties whose time has not yet passed.
To increase the winter hardiness of plums, Michurin began to work with thorns and obtained three varieties of thorns, the taste of which was mediocre. Then the scientist crossed plum with thorny and brought out several varieties. In particular, Renklod is a collective farm, which has been kept afloat since 1899 (the name was given later).
Mountain ash, actinidia, blackthorn, bird cherry, chokeberry, felt cherry grow in many gardeners, but few of them know that Michurin introduced all these plants into the culture. It is interesting that he crossed not only different types of mountain ash among themselves, but also engaged in distant hybridization, that is, he crossed mountain ash with its distant relatives - medlar (Michurinskaya dessert variety), pear (Scarlet large, Ruby), hawthorn (Garnet), chokeberry ( Liquor), apple and pear (Titanium) And now all these varieties are the most famous. They start fruiting early, the trees are not tall, the fruits are quite edible, rich in vitamins. Actinidia varieties Clara Zetkin and Pineapple are still the most common in our gardens. And there is an explanation for that. "The Clara Zetkin variety has the valuable property that the shedding of berries during ripening is very small, since the peduncle is quite strongly attached both to the berry and to the shoots," wrote I. V. Michurin.
During Michurin's youth, good tobacco was not grown in Russia. The best varieties of yellow Turkish tobacco did not ripen. And then the breeder set himself the task of introducing new varieties of tobacco into the culture - an earlier ripening period, with a lower percentage of nicotine. From the fertilization of the yellow Bulgarian early tobacco with the Sumatran small-leaved tobacco, he received a new early-ripening fragrant variety that can ripen not only in the center of Russia, but also in the Urals. Moreover, he developed the agricultural technology of tobacco, and also designed a machine for cutting it. All his life Ivan Vladimirovich kept working diaries. They have many specific recipes for all occasions in the garden. There is a recipe exactly suitable for the end of October - the beginning of November of our time.
Trees and shrubs bought in the fall, but not planted, need to be buried. To do this, they choose a slightly elevated place where water does not stagnate, then dig a ditch 70 centimeters deep from east to west, and the southern slope of the inner wall should be steep, and the northern one should be gentle. The earth is thrown onto the southern edge of the ditch. The seedlings are laid on a flat side, turning their tops to the north, carefully, so as not to break, they fall asleep with moist earth (if the earth is dry, then it is watered and loosened). Trees and shrubs can be laid in two or three rows, one above the other, placing taller plants in the first row, and shorter and smaller plants in the last. After laying each row and backfilling the roots, they are lightly watered and only then the next row is formed. After completing the operation, all the earth remaining from digging the ditch is poured over the roots in order to better drain excess spring water. The layer of earth above the roots of the last row should not be thinner than thirty centimeters, otherwise the roots will freeze. So that the seedlings do not damage the mice, spruce branches are thrown under the crowns and on them. To scare away rodents, planted trees are coated with some odorous substances. You can not apply kerosene, lard, tar, oils directly to the bark. It is necessary to apply these compounds on thick paper, straw and tie them around.
The ability to see in wildlife what is hidden from an indifferent observer manifested itself in Michurin from early childhood. At the age of three, he seriously embarrassed his father and mother (avid gardeners, vegetable growers, flower growers), wishing to take part in the sowing of seeds. They refused him - he climbed into the basket with his hand. He was pushed back - he began to run around the beds - and as a result was beaten. After crying, the little boy fell silent, then cheered up and started off at full speed towards the house. A minute later he returned with ... a salt shaker in his hand and began to sow salt in the garden. The parents watched in amazement at the little figure barely visible in the deep furrow and, embarrassed in front of each other, rushed to their son with a belated caress.
Having started breeding fruit plants at the age of 20, he had neither the means, nor the name, nor education. What awaited him along the way? Need, mistakes, failures? Statements about the "uselessness" of his work, that these experiments are "nonsense" offended the young man, but he was not going to back down. Marriage in 1874 to a modest, serious girl played a decisive role in this. Sashenka was a selfless person and became her husband's faithful friend, constant helper and support in the coming labors and trials. The firstborn was born - Kolya, two years later - Masha. Michurin did not spare his strength and health, he took on any job, but he saw the only way out in saving. The father of the family strictly takes into account all expenses to the penny, keeping himself from rash spending. Here is a diary entry full of tragedy: "For five years, there is nothing to think about acquiring land or expanding the plot. Cut costs to the extreme limits!" He is content with black bread (and not enough, but one and a half or two pounds a day) and tea, most often empty ...
The most accurate witness of Michurin's asceticism, daughter Maria Ivanovna, writes: “My father devoted his thoughts and feelings to the world of plants. ", also denying himself everything necessary. Endless hauling of water, planting plants, digging and loosening the ridges during the day, writing and reading at night took away the father's strength. He himself understood this: "Sanya, please prepare a prison for me." Mother crumbled brown bread, cut onions, poured a spoonful of sunflower oil and, diluted with water or kvass, served it to him. It was not a feat for the sake of a feat. Michurin ate tyurya not in the name of tragic glory, but in the name of the future abundance of the gardens of his native country.
For some reason, many believe that he was a reserved and stern person - with an eternal cigarette in his mouth and an invariable cane in his hand. He smoked from the age of twelve until his death, and walked with a cane (of necessity - in his youth he unsuccessfully fell from a tree and injured his kneecap), but he was not gloomy and unsociable. He did not avoid communicating with people; not only gardeners, but also an old acquaintance, engineer Ground and workers of the Kozlovsky depot, were welcome guests.
In the winter of 1881, the head of the Kozlov railway depot, Engineer Ground, suggested to Michurin that electric lighting be installed at the Kozlov station. The innovation had just appeared in the largest cities of Russia, but Michurin had a solid experience in the mechanical part and, advised by the Ground, he brilliantly completed the task. “You should quit, Mr. Michurin, messing with your garden,” the engineer told him. - You are a ready-made first-class electrical engineer. But the "electrician" did not even want to hear about betrayal of the garden business.
Michurin was an excellent watchmaker. Before he bought land and engaged in selection, he kept his own watch workshop and, by the sound of the clock, accurately determined what was wrong with the mechanism. He generally loved to craft. In his house, he admired skillful works on the mechanical part: a grafting chisel, a manual pruner, a compact apparatus for distilling essential oil from rose petals, a unique clock of his own work, a lighter, a cigarette case, a light portable tobacco cutting machine, and a special machine stuffed cigarettes with Michurinsky tobacco varieties, and also fixed bicycles, sewing machines, hunting rifles, telephone and telegraph sets ... He had a unique workshop for making models of fruits and vegetables from wax. They were considered the best in the world and were so skillfully made that others tried to bite them.
Already at a mature age, Michurin independently mastered watercolor, and his drawings were striking in their professionalism, and those related to gardening were very accurate. In the garden journal, the work was reflected in lovingly made entries. Unfortunately, the records from 1875 to 1886 have been lost, but the subsequent half century has been recorded with amazing observation. The self-criticism of Ivan Vladimirovich is striking, the frankness with which he described not only successes, but also failures.
Alexander Kursakov, great-grandson of I.V. Michurin. The glory of a healer, a sorcerer was entrenched behind him. He knew many herbs with medicinal properties, prepared all kinds of ointments, decoctions from them, healed migraine, mumps, renal colic, furunculosis, heart failure, even cancer, removed stones from the kidneys. He had the ability to influence the growth of plants and the behavior of people. It used to be that he walked with a cane across the field and showed: “Leave this one, this one and this one, throw out the rest.” Out of 10 thousand seedlings, with some flair, he singled out two or three. His assistants, secretly from him, tried to replant the plants he had rejected, but none of them gave rise to a new variety. He could talk for hours with a dying plant and it would come back to life. He could easily enter any courtyard, and the huge watchdogs did not bark. The birds landed on his hat and shoulders without fear, pecking grain from his palms.
Michurin amazed his acquaintances with his exceptional talent for taming animals and birds. Since childhood, he loved to feed sparrows - in the morning and in the evening, all year round, regardless of the weather. Under the gates of the porch, plank gutters were arranged for nesting and wintering of lively birds. The wide board-feeder, on which Ivan Vladimirovich poured hemp and millet grains in a trickle, was always full of sparrows. In each bird generation, he noted the individuals of "crooks", "bully", "rude" and "modest", encouraged noble and heroic birds who boldly rushed at the enemy and sacrificed themselves to save others. In his pocket there was always a piece of white bread (black sparrows do not take), from which the scientist rolled balls, and the sparrows, chirping, sat on his shoulders, on his hat, on his hands. Michurin even tamed frogs, a tame jackdaw lived in his house, he bred pigeons, following the hereditary traits of offspring. Newly colored birds flew from the attic of his house for decades.
“We cannot expect favors from nature; to take them from her is our task!”
I.V. Michurin
Ivan Michurin was born on October 27, 1855 in the Ryazan province in the Pronsky district. His great-grandfather and grandfather were small estate nobles, military people, participants in numerous campaigns and wars. Michurin's father, Vladimir Ivanovich, having received an excellent home education, served as an inspector at an arms factory in the city of Tula. Against the will of his parents, he married a girl of the bourgeois class and soon after that, with the rank of provincial secretary, he retired, settling in a small estate inherited called Vershina, located near the village of Yumashevka. He was a well-known person in the district - he was engaged in beekeeping and gardening, communicated with the Free Economic Society, which sent him special literature and seeds of agricultural crops. Working tirelessly in the garden, Vladimir Ivanovich made various experiments with ornamental and fruit plants, and in winter taught peasant children to read and write at home.
In the Michurin family, Ivan Vladimirovich was the seventh child, but he did not know his brothers and sisters, since out of all seven in infancy, only he survived. Reality met the future great biologist extremely harshly - Vanya was born in a cramped and dilapidated forester's lodge. The miserable situation was explained by the fact that his parents were forced to get away from the violent, nervous grandmother on the father's side. Living with her under the same roof was absolutely unbearable, and there was no money to rent your own corner. Winter was approaching, which, quite possibly, a small child in a forest hut would not have survived, but soon the grandmother was taken to a lunatic asylum, and the Michurin family returned to the estate. This only happy period in the life of the family passed very quickly. When Vanya was four years old, his mother, Maria Petrovna, who was in poor health, died of a fever.
Michurin himself grew up as a strong and healthy child. Deprived of maternal supervision, he spent a lot of time on the banks of the Prony River, fishing, or in the garden with his father. The boy watched with interest how the plants grow and die, how they close in on themselves in the rains and how they languish in the drought. All the questions that arose in the head of the observant Ivan found a fascinating and lively explanation by Vladimir Ivanovich. Unfortunately, over time, Michurin Sr. began to drink. Their house became unhappy, and the few guests and relatives stopped appearing at all. Vanya was rarely allowed out to play with the village boys, and left to himself, he spent days on end in the garden of a huge beautiful estate. Thus, digging, sowing and collecting fruits became the only games that Michurin knew as a child. And his most valuable treasures and favorite toys were the seeds that invisibly hide the germs of the future life. By the way, little Vanya had a whole collection of seeds of various colors and shapes.
Michurin received his initial education at home, and after that he was sent to the Pronsk district school. However, Ivan found a common language with his peers with great difficulty - for him, the recognizable, lasting and real world for life was the plant world. While studying, he continued to spend all his free time digging in the ground of his beloved estate. Already at the age of eight, the boy perfectly mastered various methods of grafting plants, masterfully performed such complex and incomprehensible wood operations as ablactation, copulation and budding for modern summer residents. As soon as the lessons ended, Michurin collected books and, without waiting for a cart from the Vershina, set off on a many kilometers journey home. The road through the forest in any weather was a real pleasure for him, because it made it possible to communicate with his good and only comrades - every bush and every tree on the way were well known to the boy.
In June 1872, Michurin graduated from the Pronskoye School, after which Vladimir Ivanovich, having collected the last pennies, began to prepare him for entering the St. Petersburg Lyceum at the gymnasium course. However, soon the relatively young father suddenly fell ill and was sent to a hospital in Ryazan. At the same time, it turned out that the financial affairs of the family were going worse than ever. The Michurin estate had to be mortgaged, remortgaged, and then completely sold for debts. His paternal aunt, Tatyana Ivanovna, took care of the boy. It should be noted that she was a well-educated, energetic and well-read woman, treating her nephew with great care and attention. During his school years, Michurin often visited her small estate, located in Birkinovka, where he whiled away the time reading books. Unfortunately, Tatyana Ivanovna, ready to sacrifice everything for Vanya, could barely make ends meet herself. Uncle, Lev Ivanovich, came to the rescue, who got the boy into the Ryazan gymnasium. However, Michurin did not study long at this educational institution. In the same year, 1872, he was expelled from there with the wording "for disrespect to his superiors." The reason was the case when the high school student Michurin, due to an ear disease and severe frost (or perhaps simply out of horror in front of the authorities), did not take off his hat on the street in front of the director of the educational institution. According to biographers, the real reason for Michurin's expulsion was his uncle's refusal to bribe the leadership of the gymnasium.
Thus ended Michurin's youth, and in the same year Ivan Vladimirovich moved to the city of Kozlov, the surroundings of which he did not leave for a long time until the end of his life. There he got a job as a commercial clerk at a local station belonging to the Ryazan-Ural railway. His monthly salary, by the way, was only twelve rubles. He lived in a modest hut, standing in the railway village of Yamskaya. The rude attitude of the authorities, the monotonous work, the sixteen-hour work shift and the bribery of fellow clerks - such was the situation in which Michurin was in those years. The young man did not take part in friendly drinking parties; Two years later, Ivan Vladimirovich was promoted - a quiet and executive young man took the place of a commodity cashier, and soon became one of the assistants to the head of the station. Life gradually began to improve, Ivan could well consider himself lucky - in tsarist times, leading work on the railway was considered a prestigious occupation. From his high position, Ivan Vladimirovich derived a kind of benefit - he began to visit repair shops and master plumbing. He worked there long and hard, puzzling over various technical problems for hours.
A year later, having accumulated a small capital, Michurin decided to get married. His choice fell on the daughter of a local worker, Alexandra Vasilievna Petrushina, an obedient and hard-working girl who became a friend and assistant to the great naturalist for many years. It should be noted that the impoverished noble relatives of Michurin were so outraged by his unequal marriage that they announced deprivation of their inheritance. It was an arrogant, but completely empty gesture, since there was nothing to inherit anyway. And only Michurin's aunt, Tatyana Ivanovna, continued to correspond with him. And soon after the wedding in 1875, Ivan Vladimirovich rented the empty estate of the Gorbunovs, located in the vicinity of Kozlov, with an area of about six hundred square meters. Here, having planted various fruit plants, he began his first selection experiments. Years later, Michurin would write: "Here I spent all my free time from work in the office." However, at first Ivan Vladimirovich had to experience severe disappointment due to lack of knowledge and inexperience. In subsequent years, the breeder actively studied all kinds of domestic and foreign literature on horticulture. However, many of his questions remained unanswered.
After a short time, new difficulties came - Ivan Vladimirovich, in a conversation with his colleagues, allowed himself to say too much about his boss. The latter found out about this, and Ivan Vladimirovich lost the well-paid position of assistant chief of the station. With the loss of a place, the financial situation of the young spouses turned out to be the most deplorable, close to poverty. All the money accumulated by Michurin was spent on renting land, and therefore, in order to order very expensive books on botany, seedlings and seeds from around the world from abroad, as well as buy the necessary equipment and materials, Ivan Vladimirovich had to tighten his belt and start earning money on side. Upon his return from duty, Michurin stayed up until late at night, repairing various instruments and repairing watches.
The period from 1877 to 1888 in the life of Ivan Vladimirovich was especially difficult. It was a time of hard work, hopeless need and moral upheaval due to failures in the field of acclimatization of fruit plants. However, here the iron patience of the gardener was manifested, who continued to stubbornly fight all the problems that arose. During these years, Ivan Vladimirovich invented a sprayer "for greenhouses, greenhouses, indoor flowers and all kinds of crops in the open air and in greenhouses." In addition, Michurin drew up a project for lighting the railway station where he worked, using electric current, and subsequently implemented it. By the way, the installation and repair of telegraph and telephone sets has long been a source of income for the breeder.
By that time, a unique collection of fruit and berry plants of several hundred species had been collected at the Gorbunovs' estate. Ivan Vladimirovich noted: “The estate I rented turned out to be so crowded with plants that there was no way to continue to do business on it.” In such conditions, Michurin decided to cut costs even more - from now on, he scrupulously and to the penny took into account all expenses, entering them in a special diary. Due to extreme poverty, the gardener himself repaired old clothes, sewed mittens on his own, and wore shoes until they fell apart. Sleepless nights, malnutrition, metal dust in the workshop and constant anxiety led to the fact that in the spring of 1880 Ivan Vladimirovich showed serious signs of a health disorder - he began to have pulmonary hemoptysis. To improve his health, Michurin took a vacation and, having closed the workshop, moved with his wife out of town, spending the summer in the miller's house, located near a luxurious oak forest. Beautiful and healthy countryside, sun and fresh air quickly restored the health of the breeder, who devoted all his time to reading literature and observing forest plants.
Shortly after returning home, Ivan Vladimirovich moved the entire collection of plants to the new estate of the Lebedevs. He bought it, by the way, with the help of a bank, and immediately (due to lack of funds and numerous debts) he mortgaged the land. It was in this place that the first unique Michurin varieties were bred. However, after a couple of years, and this patrimony was overflowing with plants.
In the autumn of 1887, the breeder learned that a certain priest, Yastrebov, was selling a plot of land of thirteen hectares near the village of Turmasovo, located seven kilometers from the city on the banks of the Lesnoy Voronezh River. After examining the ground, Michurin was very pleased. The whole autumn and winter of 1887-1888 was spent on feverish fundraising with labor reaching exhaustion, and finally, in May 1888, after the sale of all planting material, the deal took place, and half of the land was immediately mortgaged. It is curious that the Michurin family, which by that time had grown to four people (the gardener had a daughter, Maria, and a son, Nikolai), had only seven rubles left in cash. Due to lack of money, all the plants from the Lebedev plot were carried by members of the Michurin family on their shoulders for seven kilometers. In addition, there was no house in the new place, and they lived in a hut for two seasons. Recalling those years, Ivan Vladimirovich said that their diet included only vegetables and fruits grown by themselves, black bread, and “a chick of tea for a couple of kopecks.”
Years of hard work flowed by. In place of the hut, a real, albeit small, but real log hut arose, and the neglected wasteland around turned into a young garden, in which Ivan Vladimirovich, like a demiurge, created new forms of life. By 1893, thousands of hybrid seedlings of pear, apple and cherry trees were already growing in Turmasovo. For the first time in fruit growing in central Russia, winter-hardy varieties of apricot, peach, oil rose, sweet cherry, mulberry tree, cigarette tobacco and almonds appeared. At Michurin, plums were growing, unprecedented in these lands, grapes were bearing fruit, the vines of which wintered under the open sky. Ivan Vladimirovich himself, who finally changed his railway worker's cap for a wide-brimmed farmer's hat, lived in the nursery all the time.
It seemed to Michurin that his dreams of a secure and independent life devoted to creative activity were close to being realized. However, an unusually cold winter came and the southern, as well as Western European varieties of its plants, suffered terrible damage. After that, Ivan Vladimirovich realized all the unsuccessfulness of the method he had tested of acclimatizing old varieties with the help of grafting and decided to continue his work on breeding new varieties of plants through the directed cultivation of hybrids and artificial crossing. With great enthusiasm, the breeder took up the hybridization of plants, but these works required considerable financial injections.
It should be noted that by that time Michurin had organized a trading nursery in Turmasovo, which, however, was not widely known. In this regard, one of the most pressing issues for the biologist was still the issue of supporting his family. However, the gardener did not lose heart, placing great hopes on the sale of his unique varieties. In the twelfth year of breeding work, he sent out to all parts of the country a “Complete Price List” of fruit and ornamental shrubs and trees, as well as seeds of fruit plants available on his farm. This collection was illustrated with drawings by the gardener himself, who had an excellent command of both graphics and complex watercolor techniques. Michurin's price list had nothing to do with the advertising catalogs of trading companies and was more of a scientific guide for gardeners than a genuine price list. In his diary relating to that period, the breeder noted: “I gave up to twenty thousand catalogs to the obviously conscientious peddlers of apple trees, conductors and conductors for distribution on trains ... From the distribution of twenty thousand catalogs, a hundred customers will be obtained ... ".
Finally, the autumn of 1893 came - the long-awaited time for the first release of seedlings grown in the nursery. Michurin believed that the price lists and his articles in various magazines, which broke the centuries-old routine in horticulture, would bear fruit. He was firmly convinced that there would be many orders, but he was severely disappointed - there were practically no buyers. In a vain hope of a sale, the breeder spent his last pennies on magazine and newspaper advertisements, and also sent new catalogs through acquaintances going to auctions and fairs for distribution to merchants and the public. Despite this, in the first years of the trading nursery, Michurin met only distrust and indifference, both on the part of reputable gardeners and acclimatizers, and on the part of ordinary residents.
In 1893-1896, when thousands of hybrid seedlings were already growing in the garden of Ivan Vladimirovich, a new thought came to Michurin's brilliant mind, which led to important and great consequences. The biologist discovered that the soil of his nursery, which is a powerful black soil, is too oily and, by “spoiling” the hybrids, makes them less resistant to the devastating “Russian winters”. For the breeder, this meant the merciless elimination of all hybrids that were doubtful in their cold resistance, the sale of the Turmasovsky plot, as well as the search for a new, more suitable place. Thus, almost all the many years of work on the foundation of the nursery had to be started anew, seeking funds from new hardships. A less persistent person would have been broken by such a state of affairs, but Ivan Vladimirovich had enough determination and strength to move to a new stage in his research work.
After a long search, he finally found a piece of useless, abandoned land in the vicinity of the city of Kozlov. It belonged to a local official and was a washed-out alluvium, which abounded in ravines, swamps, channels and streams. During the flood, which was especially turbulent here, the entire land was covered with water, and even large, mature trees were washed out in low places. However, there was no cheaper and more suitable land, and the breeder decided to move his nursery here. In 1899, he sold the old place and, together with his family, moved to the suburban settlement of Donskoy for the winter. Throughout the summer of 1900, while the new house was being built, he lived in a hastily knocked down barn. By the way, Ivan Vladimirovich designed the two-story house himself, and also calculated an estimate for it. To the great chagrin of Michurin, the transfer of his nursery to a new soil ended in the loss of a significant part of the unique collection of hybrids and original forms. As before, he courageously survived this, and his assumptions about the importance of the Spartan education of hybrids were fully and completely justified. The gardener noted: “When raising seedlings on thin soil, under a harsh regime, although a smaller number of them had cultural qualities, they were quite resistant to frost.” Subsequently, the site became the main department of the Michurin Central Genetic Laboratory, and the biologist himself worked in this place until the end of his life. Here, using various technologies developed by him, the breeder proved the practical possibility of overcoming the non-crossing of many species, and also achieved the development of hybrid seedlings of the required quality, which develop very poorly under normal conditions.
In 1905 Ivan Vladimirovich turned fifty years old. And the more his skill as a gardener improved, the more unsociable his character became. In addition, despite the fact that Michurin had already bred many outstanding varieties, official science refused to recognize the achievements of the biologist. The breeder, by the way, sent his work to all specialized magazines, wrote to the emperor himself, reproaching him, as well as all bureaucratic Russia for criminal inattention to the fruit and berry industry, wrote to various ministries, drawing the attention of bureaucrats to gardening, as the most important mission of man on Earth. There is a story about how once Michurin sent an article to a Moscow gardening magazine about his new method of cutting cherries. The editors knew that cherries are not cut, and they refused to publish, explaining with the phrase: "We write only the truth." Enraged, Ivan Vladimirovich dug up and, without any written accompaniment, sent a dozen rooted cuttings of sweet cherries. In the future, he did not respond to pleas to send a description of the method, nor to tearful apologies. Michurin also refused state subsidies, so as not to fall, in his own words, into slavish dependence on departments, since "every given penny will be taken care of by its best use." In the summer of 1912, the office of Nicholas II sent a prominent official, Colonel Salov, to the gardener in Kozlov. The gallant military man was extremely surprised by the modest appearance of the Michurin estate, as well as by the poor outfit of its owner, whom the colonel at first mistook for a watchman. A month and a half after Salov's visit, Ivan Vladimirovich received two crosses - the Green Cross "for work in agriculture" and Anna of the third degree.
By that time, the fame of the gardener's hybrids had spread throughout the world. Back in 1896, Ivan Vladimirovich was elected an honorary member of the Breeders American Scientific Society, and in 1898 the All-Canadian Congress of Farmers, who met after a harsh winter, was surprised to note that all varieties of cherries of American and European origin had died out in Canada, with the exception of "Fertile Michurina" from Russia. The Dutch, well versed in flowers, offered Ivan Vladimirovich about twenty thousand royal rubles for the bulbs of his unusual lily, smelling like a violet. Their main condition was that this flower would no longer be grown in Russia. Michurin, although he lived in poverty, did not sell the lily. And in March 1913, the breeder received a message from the US Department of Agriculture with a proposal to move to America or sell a collection of plants. In order to stop encroachment on hybrids, the gardener broke such a sum that US agriculture was forced to surrender.
Meanwhile, the Michurin garden kept growing. The most daring plans of Ivan Vladimirovich were carried out as if by magic - before the revolution, more than nine hundred (!) Plant varieties, ordered from Japan, France, the USA, Germany and many other countries, grew in his nursery. His hands were no longer enough, the breeder wrote: "... loss of strength and poor health quite persistently make themselves felt." Michurin thought about involving street children in household work, but the world war intervened in these plans. The biologist's commercial nursery stopped working, and Ivan Vladimirovich, who was exhausted, again struggled to make ends meet. And the new year of 1915 brought him another misfortune, which almost destroyed all hopes for the continuation of research work. In the spring, the raging river overflowed its banks and flooded the nursery. Then severe frosts hit, burying many valuable hybrids under the ice, as well as a school of two-year-olds determined for sale. This blow was followed by an even more terrible second. In the summer, a cholera epidemic broke out in the city. Michurin's kind and sensitive wife took care of one sick girl and became infected herself. As a result, the young and strong girl recovered, and Alexandra Vasilievna died.
The loss of the closest person broke the great biologist. His garden began to fall into disrepair. Out of habit, Michurin still looked after him, but did not feel the same enthusiasm. All offers to help - rejected, and sympathizers - despised. At some point, news of the October Revolution reached Ivan Vladimirovich, but he did not attach much importance to this. And in November 1918, an authorized comrade from the People's Commissariat for Agriculture came to him and announced that his garden was being nationalized. The horror of the situation shocked Michurin, knocking him out of his usual rut and bringing a complete cure for mental illness. The breeder, immediately going to the nearest Soviets, indignantly declared there that it was impossible to take and take away everything from him like that ... The Soviet government reassured the gardener - he was informed that he would be left at the garden as head. And soon, numerous assistants and students were sent to Ivan Vladimirovich. Thus began the second life of Michurin.
Attention to the work of the breeder, to his personality and to his experience fell upon the biologist like an avalanche. The authorities needed new public idols, and somewhere in the higher spheres Michurin was appointed as such. From now on, his research was financed unlimitedly, Ivan Vladimirovich received official rights to conduct the affairs of the nursery at his own discretion. All his life, this torch of science dreamed that the wall of indifference around him would not be so discouragingly impenetrable, and at once received indisputable, popular and complete recognition. From now on, on every suitable occasion, Michurin exchanged telegrams with Stalin, and an important change appeared in his long-term daily routine - now from twelve to two in the afternoon he received delegations of scientists, collective farmers and workers. By the spring of 1919, the number of experiments in the Michurin garden had increased to several hundred. At the same time, the previously unsociable Ivan Vladimirovich advised agricultural workers on the problems of raising productivity, combating drought and selection, participated in the agronomic work of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, and also spoke to numerous students eagerly catching every word of the master.
It should be noted that Michurin, a bright supporter of the scientific organization of labor, at the age of forty-five (in 1900) established a strict daily routine, which remained unchanged until the very end of his life. The breeder got up at five in the morning and worked in the garden until twelve, with a break for breakfast at eight in the morning. At noon he dined, then until three in the afternoon he rested and read newspapers, as well as special literature (after the revolution he received delegations). From 3 pm until evening, Ivan Vladimirovich again worked in the nursery or - depending on the weather and circumstances - in his office. He had supper at 9 pm and worked on correspondence until midnight, and then went to bed.
A curious fact, when Ivan Vladimirovich had a losing streak, he temporarily broke away from his beloved plant world and moved on to other jobs - he repaired watches and cameras, worked on mechanics, modernized barometers and invented unique tools for gardeners. Michurin himself explained this by the need to "refresh mental abilities." After the break, he took up his main activity with renewed vigor. The multifunctional office of the naturalist served him at the same time as a laboratory, an optics and mechanics workshop, a library, and also a forge. In addition to numerous barometers and secateurs, Ivan Vladimirovich invented and made a device for measuring radiation, an elegant distillation apparatus for distilling essential oil from rose petals, a grafting chisel, a cigarette case, a lighter, and a special machine for stuffing cigarettes with tobacco. He designed a biologist and a lightweight internal combustion engine for his own needs. In his experiments, he used electricity generated by a hand-held dynamo he had assembled. For a long time, the breeder could not afford to buy a typewriter, in the end he made it himself. In addition, he invented and built a metal portable portable furnace in which he soldered and forged his equipment. He also had a unique workshop for making models of fruits and vegetables from wax. They were reputed to be the best in the world and were so skillful that many tried to bite them. In the same office-workshop, Michurin received visitors. Here is how one of them described the room: “Behind the glass of one cabinet there are test tubes, flasks, flasks, jars, bent tubes. Behind the glass of another - models of berries and fruits. On the tables are letters, drawings, drawings, manuscripts. Everywhere, where there is only space, various electrical appliances and apparatuses are placed. In one corner, between a bookshelf and a workbench, is an oak cabinet with all sorts of carpentry, plumbing, and turning tools. In other corners, garden pitchforks, hoes, shovels, saws, sprayers and secateurs. On the table - a microscope and magnifiers, on a workbench - a vise, a typewriter and an electrostatic machine, on a bookcase - notebooks and diaries. On the walls - geographical maps, thermometers, barometers, chronometers, hygrometers. There is a lathe by the window, and next to it is a carved cabinet with seeds received from all over the world.
The gardener's second life lasted eighteen years. By 1920, he had developed more than one hundred and fifty new hybrid varieties of cherries, pears, apple trees, raspberries, currants, grapes, plums, and many other crops. In 1927, at the initiative of a prominent Soviet geneticist, Professor Iosif Gorshkov, the film South in Tambov was released, which promoted Michurin's achievements. In June 1931, the breeder was awarded the honorary Order of Lenin for his fruitful work, and in 1932 the ancient city of Kozlov was renamed Michurinsk, turning into an all-Russian center of horticulture. In addition to large fruit nurseries and fruit growing farms, the Michurin State Agrarian University and the Michurin Research Institute of Fruit Growing subsequently appeared there.
The students of the great biologist told legends about how Michurin could talk for hours with dying plants, and they returned to life. He could also enter any unfamiliar courtyard and the huge watchdogs did not bark. And from hundreds of seedlings, with some supernatural instinct, he culled out those that were not viable. The disciples tried to replant secretly rejected seedlings, but they never took root.
Almost the entire winter of 1934-1935, despite age-related ailments, Ivan Vladimirovich worked actively, without violating the established regime for decades. As always, delegations came to him, and the closest students were always with him. In addition, Ivan Vladimirovich corresponded with all the leading breeders of the Soviet Union. In February 1935, the seventy-nine-year-old scientist suddenly fell ill - his strength weakened, he lost his appetite. Despite his condition, Michurin continued to engage in all ongoing work in the nursery. Throughout March and April, between attacks, he worked hard. At the end of April, the Main Sanitary Directorate of the Kremlin, together with the People's Commissariat of Health, appointed a special consultation, which discovered stomach cancer in the patient. In connection with the serious condition of the patient in mid-May, a second consultation was organized, which confirmed the diagnosis of the first. Doctors were constantly at the gardener, but throughout May and early June, Michurin, who was on artificial nutrition, tormented by severe pain and bloody vomiting, continued to look through correspondence and advise his students without getting out of bed. He constantly called them, gave instructions and made changes to the work plans. There were a great many new breeding projects in Michurin's nursery - and the students, in choked, interrupted voices, informed the old gardener about fresh results. The consciousness of Ivan Vladimirovich died out at nine o'clock in the morning thirty minutes on June 7, 1935. He was buried next to the agricultural institute he created.
Based on the materials of the book by A.N. Bakharev "The Great Transformer of Nature" and the site http://sadisibiri.ru.
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Michurin Ivan Vladimirovich - famous biologist - breeder, creator of many modern varieties of fruit and berry crops. Born October 28, 1855 in the Vershina estate, near the village of Dolgoe (now Michurovka) in the Pronsky district of the Ryazan province. He studied first at home, and then at the Pronsk district school of the Ryazan province, devoting all his free time to working in the garden. On June 19, 1872, he graduated from the Pronsk district school, after which his father prepared his son at the gymnasium course for admission to the St. Petersburg Lyceum. But suddenly his father falls ill. To pay off debts, the estate has to be sold. Deprived of the opportunity to get a higher education, Michurin enters the Ryazan gymnasium. But a few months later he was expelled from it.
At the end of 1872, I. V. Michurin got a job as a commercial clerk in the commodity office of the Kozlov station (Ryazan-Ural railway, later - Michurinsk station, Moscow-Ryazan railway). Two years later, Michurin occupied the position of assistant chief, but not for long, a quarrel with the station chief disrupted plans. Michurin changed jobs and began repairing clocks and signaling devices.
Soon, he managed to rent an abandoned estate in the Kozlov area, with an area of 130 hectares, with a small plot of land, on which Michurin began breeding experiments with more than 600 plant species. Having moved to the city estate of acquaintances, Michurin bred the first varieties of plants: Commerce raspberry, Griot cherry, Krasa Severa cherry, etc. But after a few years this estate turned out to be overcrowded with plants.
Several times Michurin moved the nursery, acquiring plots of land with a larger area. This was achieved through backbreaking labor and austerity. Long years of work in the field of hybridization brought results - Michurin created valuable varieties of apple trees: Antonovka one and a half pounds, Kandil-Chinese, Renet bergamot, Slavyanka; pears: Bere winter Michurina, Bergamot Novik; plums: Renklod golden, Renklod reform, Turn sweet and other crops. For the first time in the history of fruit growing, he created winter-hardy varieties of sweet cherries, almonds, grapes, papyrus tobacco, oil-bearing roses, etc. in the middle lane. Michurin is convinced of the failure of the method of acclimatization by grafting, and concludes that the soil of the nursery - powerful black soil - is oily and " pampers" hybrids, making them less resistant to the devastating "Russian winter" for heat-loving varieties.
In 1906, the first scientific publications of I. V. Michurin, touching on the problem of new breeding of fruit tree varieties, saw the light. Already in 1912, Michurin was awarded the Order of Anna of the third degree for his achievements. In 1913, the Americans offered Michurin to sell a collection of varieties, which was refused by the breeder.
After the October Revolution, Michurin continued his work and finally received state support. In 1918, at his request, the nursery was nationalized, and Ivan Vladimirovich was appointed its director. In 1921 and 1923 local authorities allocated additional land for the nursery. By 1922, Michurin produced over 150 new varieties of fruit trees and shrubs: apple trees - 45 varieties, pears - 20 varieties, cherries - 13 varieties, sweet cherries - 6 varieties, mountain ash - 3 varieties, etc.
In 1923, the first All-Union Agricultural Exhibition was opened in Moscow, at which Michurin's achievements were also presented. The expert commission of the exhibition awarded Michurin the highest award - a diploma from the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. November 20, 1923 nursery named after I.V. Michurin was recognized as a national institution and received the name of the Experimental Nursery. I.V. Michurin. Further, in 1928, it was renamed the State Breeding and Genetic Station. I.V. Michurin, and in 1934 the station was transformed into the Central Genetic Laboratory. I.V. Michurin.
In 1925, the government of the USSR celebrated the 50th anniversary of Michurin's activity with greetings and awarded him the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. And on June 7, 1931, he was awarded the Order of Lenin. On the eve of his 80th birthday, Michurin was awarded many honorary titles: Honored Worker of Science and Technology (1934), Doctor of Biological and Agricultural Sciences. Sciences (1934), Academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935), Honorary Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1935), Honorary Member of the Czechoslovak Agricultural Academy (1935).
The most important issues developed by Michurin: intervarietal and distant hybridization, methods of raising hybrids in connection with the patterns of ontogenesis, dominance management, mentor methodological assessment and selection of seedlings, acceleration of the breeding process with the help of physical and chemical factors. Michurin created the theory of selection of initial forms for crossing. He found that "the farther the pairs of crossed plants - producers are separated from each other in the place of their homeland and the conditions of their environment, the easier hybrid seedlings adapt to 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 methods of distant hybridization. He proposed methods for overcoming the genetic barrier of incompatibility during distant hybridization: pollination of young hybrids at their first flowering, preliminary vegetative convergence, the use of an intermediary, pollination with a mixture of pollen, etc.
In addition, Michurin was a good mechanic-inventor. He designed and manufactured a tobacco cutting machine, a distillation apparatus for determining the percentage of rose oil, tools for pollination and grafting, and developed a unique method of air rooting cuttings.