Wine, Mirzayev and Shreder

Shortly after reading Gary Nabhan's new book, Where our Food Comes From, I had the good fortune to visit Uzbekistan and learn a little bit more about the time that Vavilov spent there, including his laying of the foundation stone for the original building and institute that are now part of the Uzbekistan Research Institute of Plant Industry (UzRIPI), which currently houses the Central Asian Caucus (CAC) genebank home to over 23,000 accessions of which about 50% are cereals (and about 5% of the total are crop wild relatives). To the present day over 200 cultivars have been developed on the basis of materials held in this collection, including contributions from crop wild relatives. But it was the opportunity to learn about other lesser-known pioneers of agrobiodiversity such as R.R. Shreder and M.M. Mirzayev that was of greatest interest. From 1903 to 1944, R.R. Shreder was the first director of the Uzbekistan Research Institute of Horticulture, Viticulture and Wine Making. An institute which spawned many of the present day agricultural-related institutes in Uzbekistan. Having been sent in 1911 as a delegate to the 6th International Congress on Dryland Farming in the U.S. he returned with considerable germplasm to test under Uzbek conditions. M.M. Mirzayev continued on much of the work of Shreder when he took over as director. It was an absolute pleasure to be able to spend an afternoon in the company of Dr Mirmaksud Mirzayev (the now director and son of M.M.) and his staff and enjoy an extended lunch while washed down with some excellent muscat wines produced and bottled at the institute. If anything it was a welcome respite from the vodka and cognac! The institute also has an excellent museum that is well worth a visit. During the most recent winter Tashkent experienced temperatures as low as -20oC and such temperatures are impacting severely on many of the grape varieties. Pictured is a massively overgrown wild grape vine located just outside the door of the museum. No one seems to know where it came from but they do know that it thrives in such low temperatures. They just need to work out how to transfer such a trait to its cultivated relatives!