Author: Andrew Still (Page 5 of 8)

A nice detour to Eastern Germany

January 12, 2007 / Andrew Still / 0 Comments

We left St. Petersburg by bus on Friday, January 12, and 36 hours later found ourselves in Berlin. Two hours after that we were in the town of Greifswald, on the Baltic Sea but identified as Eastern Germany more than Northern. Nevertheless, as we proceeded north on the train we noticed more and more “grunkohl” (= a curly leafed, bright green kale common in Denmark) in people’s dachas (the Russian word for little gardens away from one’s home).

We were met at the train station by Mareen Protze, one of the members of the board of directors for Naturschutzjugend Deutschland (NAJU). NAJU is Germany’s largest youth environmental action organization, with over 80,000 members throughout the country. NAJU has many local and national environmental initiatives, including an internet game program where members score points based on different conservation/preservation activities, such as cleaning streams or building birdhouses.

Photos L to R: Mareen & Sarah, place of study, northern germany at sunset.

But there is also an international scope: One of the things that NAJU does is coordinate International Exchanges over the summer, where participants can see what young people are doing on behalf of the environment in other parts of Europe. NAJU provides the organizational tools for any member of the organization to plan an exchange trip with a country and focus of their choice, and then makes the trip available to other people within the organization. Mareen has planned trips to Belarus and Poland in this way. These trips, and many others, focus on social exchange as well as environmental topics. For example, there is one trip this summer between Germany and Serbia that focuses on hip-hop culture in the two countries. As with many social and environmental initiatives, Germany seems to be leading the way with this one.

Russia Part 3: VIR Tour and a Bronze Medal

January 6, 2007 / Andrew Still / 1 Comment

The Vavilov Institute is located in two beautiful old buildings in the main part of St. Petersberg. We were told that the government does not believe the Institute needs to be located on such prime real estate (right next to the Hotel Astoria and other big-money hotels), and so they do not provide them with the funds to maintain the buildings.

Some of the space of at least one of the buildings is rented out to other businesses and this building, which houses the herbarium and some of the gene bank, as well as many offices, is in the course of renovation — the outside is complete but the inside has far to go. This is the building that we spent most of our time in — it houses Sergey’s office.

Left: Sergey Alexanian, our great host. Right: One of many Vavilov Statues.

We had the opportunity, though, to walk across a great traffic circle (the “backyard”) to the Institute’s building on the other side. This building was initially designed to be apartments for nobility (200+ years ago), and some of the interiors were reminiscent of the Hermitage, with gold plating on the walls and frescoes in the halls, and ornately carved ceilings throughout. This is where the Director of the Institute’s office lies, and also where the private Vavilov Museum is located. There are also two great halls capable of hosting at least 100 people for conferences and the like, and also many other offices that we did not see. Our tour of this building began with a walk around to see some of the more impressive rooms mentioned above.

Next we went to the private Vavilov Museum, which consists of several exhibits detailing the achievements of Vavilov as well as those of the Institute. There are maps depicting Vavilov’s Centers of Origin, and maps that show where he himself went on collecting missions over a 20-year period from the 19teens to 1940. The most impressive map, though, is the one that details all of the collecting missions that have been carried out by all staff of the Vavilov Institute over the past 100 years – this map is nearly all marked up, except for locations that are very far north. This is especially impressive when one considers the political situation with Russia for most of that time, and the financial situation now.

Photos from left to right: Sergey giving us the museum tour, books in Vavilov’s study, map of the institute’s collection missions, N.I. Vavilov.

Russia Part 2: Herbarium and Legumes

January 5, 2007 / Andrew Still / 0 Comments

On Wednesday we had the pleasure of taking a tour of parts of the Vavilov Institute. The first stop on our tour was the Herbarium. An herbarium is a collection of preserved samples of plants or plant parts, usually pressed on sheets of paper, for scientists and researchers to view. The herbarium at the Vavilov Institute is home to over 200,000 such samples, collected by Vavilov himself and other scientists on collection missions throughout the world. It was once one of the preeminent herbariums in the world, but now the largest herbariums in France and England house over seven million specimens!

We were very excited to see the herbarium, but also a bit surprised at its condition. Everything was very clean and well organized, but it seemed that funds were deemed to be more useful elsewhere, as the lights were off and the room was lit through the open curtains only (this could be better for the specimens). There was no climate control, and the cabinets and boxes used to store the specimens were quite antique looking. Many aspects of the Vavilov Institute seem to be straight from another time, and the herbarium was no exception.

Left: Preparing seeds to give to VIR. Right: The Vavilov Institute.

There were a few people working in the room, examining specimens at their leisure. The coordinator took a few minutes to show us some samples that are kept out as examples of the layout of different types of plants. We viewed samples of a grass and a tree, and observed how they were filed according to species in boxes stacked in row after row of tall wood cherry wood cabinets. One of the samples had the signiture of Vavilov on it — this was a sample that he had actually collected! After sufficient oohs and aahs, we walked down to the office of one of the scientists.

Left: Sergey showing us the the Herbarium collection. Right: A specimen collected by N.I. Vavilov in the 1920’s.

We were quite happy to meet the Director of Legumes, Dr. Margarita Vishnyakova. In her office we found petrie dishes with examples of the different species of beans and peas, and a large case filled with different fava bean (Vicia faba) varieties. On her wall were two mosaics made from beans, and on shelves around were giant pods from leguminous trees and branches from different leguminous plants.

Russia Part 1: Background

January 4, 2007 / Andrew Still / 0 Comments

In 1939 Winston Churchill said “Russia is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” and coincidently a short time before we entered the country there was a magazine title story that was called something like, “Russia — Understanding the Enigma” sitting in the window of a German book store. More than 65 years later Churchill’s description is still applicable.

Most of us have some sort of preconceived notions about Russia, and we must admit that we had ours. Our stay in Saint Petersburg was really only enough to add to those a priori assumptions, and as with most countries (and most things in general), we left feeling like we had learned just enough to realize that we haven’t a clue about the country, let alone the city that we called home for eight days.

Photos from right to left: Frozen crust on the River Moyka, The Hermitage, The first tourist pose in a long time, The “Church on Spilled Blood” used as a root cellar but the Soviets.

Our interest in visiting Russia was inspired by the renowned Vavilov Institute (VIR), which is known for housing one of the world’s largest and oldest gene banks. In planning our trip to Europe, the VIR was at the top of the list of places we wanted to go, and after more than a little effort, Nick was able to secure an invitation for us.

We had the unique circumstance of arranging a visit to Russia that bridged the first two weeks of the New Year, with an arrival of January 4 and a departure of January 12. In arranging our trip, Sergey Alexanian, a Vice Director and the Foreign Relations specialist at the Vavilov Institute, had mentioned “the holidays,” but I assumed he was referring only to the couple of days on either side of the weekend of January 6-7, the Eastern Orthodox Christmas. Like with many assumptions, I was very wrong.

Portrait of N.I Vavilov

Land of Latvia

January 3, 2007 / Andrew Still / 0 Comments

Latvia for new year’s eve was a bit more drunken than our other new year’s spent traveling, when we were in Malaysia (2003-04). A few thousand people gathered under the Freedom Monument in the central part of Riga, danced in the street to pop music courtesy of a live DJ, and oohed and aahed at fireworks exploding directly overhead, closer than I have ever seen them. We were in Latvia for about five days, but most of this time was New Year’s holiday celebrations, and so our opportunities for meeting with seed related contacts were minimal.

Photos Left to right: Powerful statues outside the Latvian Occupation Museum, Beautiful Old town Riga, The liberty Statue (where people where once thrown in jail for putting flowers at its base).

Our first impressions of Latvia seemed to indicate that this country was much more economically developed/ “successful” than Lithuania, judging only by superficial views of the size and glitz of Riga compared to Vilnius, the amount of English speakers, and the general cosmopolitan feel of the city. Because of these opinions, we were expecting the Organic scene here to be more mature than in Lithuania, but we learned that in many ways Latvia is on par with Lithuania, and in some ways has further to go in developing organic agriculture, seeds, and markets.

We had the luck of arranging a last-minute visit with Dr. Livija Zarina of the Priekuli Plant Breeding Institute, about a two hour bus ride north east of Riga. The work at the Institute, whose logo is a potato flower, is focused almost entirely on field crops. The state institute of Priekuli owns 286 hectares and grows on an additional 100 hectares rented from neighbors. The six departments at Priekuli include potato, barley, tritcale and rye breeding programs, agrotechologies, seed production of field crops, and a tissue culture lab. They have also managed a small organic experimental field for many years now, which Dr. Zarina counts as one very important aspect of Priekuli, “We are really rich. Not many places have this, but in ours, it exists.”

Photos right to left: Dr. Zarina our host at the Plant Breeding Station, A beautiful Potato flower for a logo, Display of their pea breeding accomplishments, Short term seed storage, Latvia’s main organic certification office.

Dr. Zarina is the Head of the Agrotechnology Department, and her work is focused mostly on canola. She is also involved in an intensive study that, for at least the past ten years, has been trying to establish a system of crop rotation that is beneficial for fertility needs of organic production of Latvia’s main field crops of rape, rye, barley, peas, and a few others. The experiments are evaluating six fertilizing schemes and soil management practices with 11 different crop rotations.

Lithuania Part 5: Certify It!

January 2, 2007 / Andrew Still / 0 Comments

Don’t criticize it, certify it! ORGANIC Lithuania.

L to R: 1. A view of some of the Organic Certification paperwork, including the three colors of certificates: Red and yellow for the first two years of transition to OG, and green for fully Organic. 2. Kayla looking at some documents with the head of the Lithuania Organic Certification agency. 3. The shelves and folders of the Certified Farmers (unfortunately only a few seed growers).

After learning about the paperwork we when to a small special organic farmers market.

L to R: 1. The Kaunas Organic Farmer’s Market. 2. Some local produce (apples, beats, parsnips sunchoke!, Rutabagas!, cabbage, squash, parsley, onions, potatoes, and some little yellow Lithuanian quinces). 3. Herbal teas that can be mixed special for your own needs. 4. Grains and the first OG kids cereal in LT. 5. Collecting some LT grain and caraway accessions.