Nikolai Vavilov and the World's First Seed Bank | 2023 NHD Documentary

One day, a man who had seen enough starvation in his country decided to dedicate his life to creating stronger crops. Collecting seeds with favorable traits from multiple countries, he established the world’s first seed bank, crossing a frontier in biodiversity. His name was Nikolai Vavilov, and he battled various challenges, from political regimes to pseudoscience. Despite this, Vavilov’s creation of the first seed bank continues to supply the world with food today. Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov wa

s born to a wealthy merchant family in Moscow, Russia, on November 25, 1887. His father came from poverty but became wealthy after working hard in business. Nikolai Vavilov had three siblings: two sisters and one brother, Sergey, who became an influential physicist. However, growing up in Russia meant witnessing multiple famines. Every few years, crops would be destroyed by weather, insects, or disease, causing widespread hunger. One significant famine occurred from 1891 to 1892 and caused 400,0

00 deaths. Through his country’s strife, Vavilov realized crops were excessively in-bred, meaning that only plants with similar genetic traits were reproducing. Due to inbreeding, new generations of crops were less genetically diverse than their predecessors, causing increasing weakness and failure. Determined to make plants more resilient, Vavilov attained his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the prestigious Moscow Agricultural Institute. During his graduate research, Vavilov gained much

of his scientific inspiration from studying under William Bateson, the founder of genetics. Meanwhile, in 1921, Russia’s leader, Vladimir Lenin, declared the collectivization of farms to feed his army. Under collectivization, private farms no longer existed and were government property. Collectivization prevented seeds from being sown and coupled with a severe drought, led to the Russian famine of 1921, where an estimated 5 million people died. Lenin’s mistake motivated him to support agricultu

ral scientists, like Nikolai Vavilov, who was now the director of the All-Union Institute of Plant Industry in Leningrad. In response to the famines, Vavilov became determined to collect wild plants, which naturally have stronger traits, and breed them with domesticated crops. In this way, favorable characteristics would be inherited in the domesticated crops. Vavilov focused on the areas of highest genetic diversity where the first plants were cultivated; he called these places centers of origi

n, concluding there were seven. In total, Vavilov made 115 journeys to 64 countries, amassing a total of 380,000 wild seeds. Returning to the institute in Leningrad, he created the world’s first seed bank to preserve his collection for cross-breeding research. Vavilov knew the seed bank’s invaluable genetic traits would help crops grow successfully and provide food for countless people in the future. Due to his research, in 1929, he became President of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and “

the foremost agronomist in the country.” Vavilov garnered significant renown and respect in the scientific community for his influential work. At a conference, one scientist even exclaimed, “Russia shall not perish as long as there are people like [Nikolai] Vavilov!” However, pseudoscience and political regimes would soon challenge Vavilov’s genetics research. While Vavilov was researching genetics, a young peasant-raised scientist named Trofim Lysenko was gaining recognition for vernalization,

a method of exposing plants to cold to make them more cold-resistant. Lysenko’s methods were not tested in controlled experiments, making it likely that his results of high crop yields were faked. Lysenko’s ideology of changing the environment to influence inheritance was comparable to removing the tail of a cat and expecting it to give birth to tailless kittens. Nevertheless, Lysenko presented vernalization as a quick solution to Russia’s crop failure, which was gladly accepted by Joseph Stalin

, Russia's new communist leader (Baranski). When Stalin collectivized farms in 1931 and applied Lysenko’s methods, it led to famine on an unprecedented scale. Along with a lack of workforce and unrealistically high government quotas, Lysenko’s faulty methods caused millions of deaths throughout Soviet Union regions and prolonged food shortages. The event struck especially hard in Ukraine, where it was known as Holodomor, literally meaning “death by starvation.” Despite this, Stalin continued to

support Lysenko’s methods, favoring his peasant background and ideology that changing the environment purely determined outcomes. To cover Lysenko’s mistakes, Stalin blamed the atrocities of the 1931 famine on the “bourgeois specialists,” middle-class scientists like Nikolai Vavilov. Vavilov’s closest co-workers were arrested, tortured, and forced to falsely accuse Vavilov of conspiring against the government. As Stalin began supporting Lysenko’s science, Vavilov found his life in upheaval. In 1

936, Lysenko publicly denounced Vavilov’s work in genetics at a conference, and in 1938, he replaced Vavilov as the president of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. As Lysenko’s pseudoscience became mainstream due to government approval, he pressured Vavilov to renounce his genetic research. But Vavilov would never give up. He exclaimed, “You can bring me to the stake, you can burn me, but I will not renounce my convictions." Vavilov directly resisted the government-established science; Stalin

knew it was time to eliminate him. After dedicating 20 years to collecting seeds, Vavilov was seized by Soviet officials in 1940 and sentenced to Saratov Prison for supposedly betraying the government. Sadly, Vavilov, the man who dedicated his life’s work to ending famine, died of starvation in prison at age 55. Meanwhile, the Nazis had invaded Leningrad, in a bombardment that would drag on for 872 days. With no food supply, many citizens died of starvation. Among them was a group that was surr

ounded by food but refused to eat any of it: Vavilov’s scientists at the seed bank. Despite the absence of Vavilov, they prioritized the safety of the seed bank, choosing to starve to death among potatoes, rice, and wheat rather than eat the collection. One scientist nobly stated, “‘It was hard to walk. It was unbearably hard to get up in the morning, [even] to move your hands and feet . . . but it was not in the least difficult to refrain from eating up the collection.’” Among many scientists w

ho succumbed were Georgy K. Kriyer, Liliya M. Rodina, and Dmitry S. Ivanov Those who survived were able to store the collection in the Ural mountains and retrieve them after the siege. Due to the courageous efforts of these scientists, the seed collection was largely preserved. Why didn’t these scientists eat the collection and preserve themselves? Because they knew the seeds were vital for the success of agriculture in the future. Their sacrifices were not made in vain. By the end of the 20th c

entury, the potato plants stored in the seed bank helped increase potato yield in Russia by two to four times due to traits of resistance to disease and pests, quicker growth, and storability. Additionally, crops such as wheat, oat, rice, and numerous others could grow farther than ever because of faster growth rates and resistance to cold weather. Nikolai Vavilov became revitalized, gaining national recognition, and the institute was renamed the N.I. Vavilov All Russian Institute of Plant Genet

ic Resources, or VIR, in his honor. Today, the seed bank’s impact expands internationally. Currently, it is estimated that 80% of Russian crops are related to VIR seeds, proving that Vavilov’s strenuous efforts to preserve plant genetic diversity helped modern crops grow successfully. With such a large percentage of crops descended from VIR samples, most crops in the world likely have some relation to VIR seeds. Vavilov’s seed bank has also inspired the creation of seed banks globally, such as t

he Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Although Vavilov was successful, some argue that his major opponent, Lysenko, was a pioneer of epigenetics, which is the study of how the environment influences gene activity. As a result, Lysenko has regained popularity in Russia, with some hailing him as a hero. Despite this, the study of epigenetics has been experimentally proven to have no relation to Lysenko’s concepts of environmental heredity. Additionally, Lysenko’s claims lack experimental evidence, and mo

dern genetics continues to disprove his ideas. Today, Nikolai Vavilov is widely respected as a brilliant scientist whose creation of the world’s first seed bank helped increase crop yield and maintain food supply for future generations. 80% of Russian crops are descended from the seeds that Vavilov and his institute’s scientists sacrificed their lives for, making it likely that most food products today are related to Vavilov’s seeds. The frontier that Vavilov crossed in biodiversity has an everl

asting impact on agriculture and continues to inspire others to protect plant diversity.