VAVILOV GARDENS IN FRANCE: ROOTS AND CROWNS

Abstract

One of the features of N. I. Vavilov's phenomenon is the ever unquenchable interest in his ideas and research and, moreover, the growing need for their development. This has become especially urgent in the recent decades - the era of global erosion of agricultural biodiversity and the consolidation of the world community to preserve it.N.I.Vavilov was and remains the ideologist of such preservation. One of the most striking examples of this fact is the ongoing establishment of the Vavilov Gardens in France. They represent one of the aspects in the activities of the Resource Center for Applied Botany (CRBA - Center de Ressources de Botanique Appliquée), a nongovernmental organization having close links with VIR. Vavilov's planetary mission to conserve the world's genetic resources of plants could not but affect France, a country that is at a crossroads of the many routes traversed by the scientist. He visited France many times, had good acquaintances and friends there. This article is an overview of available facts featuring Vavilov's visits to France and his contacts with his French colleagues and Russian emigrants. Among Vavilov 's friends were well-known French biologists A. Chevalier, L. Trabut, E. Miège and others, the Slavist A. Mazon, agricultural historian A. Haudricourt, archaeologist A. Foucher, head of VilmorinAndrieux & Cie Jacqueline Vilmoren, etc. In France, he met with scholars from the diaspora of Russian emigrants, including those who worked at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Vavilov highly appreciated the professionalism and modesty of French scientists, was grateful to many of them for their help in organizing his expeditionary surveys, obtaining valuable scientific information and plant material. Vavilov was invited to France several times to deliver lectures and reports. For many years he corre-sponded with a number of French scientists.