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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Debline and Chocolate Boarding and Deblina.

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Speaker 1: Last week I took a vacation. I went to a

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Speaker 1: wedding in Indiana, and I was also in Kentucky for

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Speaker 1: a little bit too, so I was in corn country,

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Speaker 1: kind of one of the prime areas of corn country,

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Speaker 1: and I did see a lot of corn on my drive.

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Speaker 1: I would just drive down the highway, see corn on

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Speaker 1: both sides. Um I noticed some growing right up to

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Speaker 1: an Arby's, like literally right up to the parking lot,

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Speaker 1: which I thought was kind of funny. And as soon

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Speaker 1: as I got home, I picked up my July National

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Speaker 1: Geographic and I noticed an article that sort of sparked

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Speaker 1: my interest, possibly because I had just seen all this corn,

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Speaker 1: but it was an article on agriculture by Charles Siebert,

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Speaker 1: and it was specific on seed banks. And I know

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Speaker 1: you're kind of a fan of seed banks, or you're

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Speaker 1: interested in them, at least I am, And I have

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Speaker 1: no idea why, considering that I'm not interested in saving

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Speaker 1: apparently in any other aspect of my life. But before

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Speaker 1: we go any further, let's talk about seed banks a

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Speaker 1: little bit for those who don't know what they are.

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Speaker 1: The basic idea behind seed banks is that they are

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Speaker 1: backup copies of our agricultural history. So as we've turned

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Speaker 1: more and more toward monoculture crops and high yield strains

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Speaker 1: since the Green Revolution of the nineteen forties, we've boosted

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Speaker 1: production and prevented an estimated one billion people from starving.

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Speaker 1: But we've also abandoned a lot of the diversity that

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Speaker 1: made that specialized breeding possible in the first place. If

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Speaker 1: the world's top wheat varieties, for instance, were suddenly struck

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Speaker 1: by a blight, the resistance to fight that blight might

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Speaker 1: unfortunately be found in some old variety or some wild

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Speaker 1: variety that we have already lost. So the seed bank

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Speaker 1: is basically just an insurance policy, a way to preserve

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Speaker 1: the wild species and to preserve those ancient, domesticated varieties

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Speaker 1: of crops that aren't widely grown anymore. Because people are

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Speaker 1: growing certain high yield varieties, you know, we keep them

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Speaker 1: around just in case. And as I learned in this

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Speaker 1: National Geographic article, though, the seed bank for the long

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Speaker 1: term preservation as opposed to just for next year's crop

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Speaker 1: is a pretty new idea, one that came about in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties nineteen thirties in Russia, and it was

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Speaker 1: the idea of a botanist named Nikolai Vavilov, who is

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Speaker 1: sometimes called the Indiana Jones of botany. So that's our

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Speaker 1: little hook there to get you into this one, because

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Speaker 1: he did really take part in some interesting, adventurous world

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Speaker 1: travels in pursuit of his seed collections. Yeah, but as

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Speaker 1: we'll see, seed banks and the genetic principles that guide

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Speaker 1: them could be pretty controversial topics. People died for their

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Speaker 1: scientific beliefs in the story that we're about to tell you,

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Speaker 1: and scientists starved other than eat their stores of seeds.

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Speaker 1: It's something for This is something for everyone podcast. I

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Speaker 1: would say genetics world issues like famine and commercial agriculture,

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Speaker 1: plus a healthy dose of World War two era intrigue.

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Speaker 1: But technically it all starts in a peaceful monastery in Austria. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so we're gonna rewind a little bit to biology. One

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Speaker 1: oh one. Most of us today know Gregor Mendel is

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Speaker 1: the father of genetics, but during his lifetime he was

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Speaker 1: among a well educated monk who had a penchant for

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Speaker 1: breeding peas and studying their inherited traits. I swear I

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Speaker 1: can still see the little illustration in my biology textbook

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Speaker 1: of the peas and how they're crossed, and the photo

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Speaker 1: of Gregor Mendel next to it. But after Mendel's death

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Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty four, his revolutionary work was largely forgotten

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Speaker 1: until nineteen hundred when a guy named William Bateson, who

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Speaker 1: is considered the father of the science of genetics, popularized

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Speaker 1: Mendelian genetics of the University of Cambridge, and he wrote

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Speaker 1: the first genetics textbook on it, and within a few

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Speaker 1: years it was it was the new dominant theory in genetics.

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Speaker 1: And one of bates AND's students was young and Nikolai Babolov,

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Speaker 1: who we mentioned earlier, and he had been born in

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Speaker 1: Moscow in eighteen eighties seven to a wealthy merchant family.

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Speaker 1: Before studying with Bateson, Vavilov had graduated from a Russian

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Speaker 1: agricultural academy, one of the many that were established after

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Speaker 1: a terrible famine of eighteen ninety two, and famine is

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Speaker 1: going to prove to be a major theme here. So

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Speaker 1: just keep going mind for the past. Yes. After learning

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Speaker 1: about genetics and the new scientific possibilities to botany, Vavilov

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Speaker 1: decided that he'd devote himself to helping the poor, finding

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Speaker 1: and breeding strains of crops that could grow in all

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Speaker 1: parts of Russia, eliminating the possibility of famine. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: he really he did that quite successfully, had a good career.

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Speaker 1: After school. He went to work as a professor, and

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Speaker 1: soon he rose to be deputy head of the Bureau

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Speaker 1: for Applied Botany. His career under Lenin ESPEC sally thrived,

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Speaker 1: and other positions followed. He became the head of the

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Speaker 1: Department of Applied Botany at Saratov University, the head of

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Speaker 1: the Institute of Experimental Agronomy UM, and later it's president

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Speaker 1: at the v I. Lenin All Union Academy. A lot

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Speaker 1: of words here, a lot of institutes and academies, but

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Speaker 1: just to give you a sense of how successful he was.

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Speaker 1: Eventually he even became the director of the Institute of Genetics.

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Speaker 1: But all the while he did have that motivating force

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Speaker 1: of of preventing famine, helping Russia develop strains of crops

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Speaker 1: that that could grow all over the country. Which obviously

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Speaker 1: has a very diverse climate. But he knew that to

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Speaker 1: breed better seeds, he'd have to have lots and lots

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Speaker 1: and lots of genes to work with to get those

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Speaker 1: desirable traits that he needed, things like cold resistance, drought resistance,

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Speaker 1: pests and resistance whatever you're you're trying to imbue in

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Speaker 1: the plant you're creating. And he knew that he'd need

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Speaker 1: not just the wild relatives of common crops, but the

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Speaker 1: ancient domesticated varieties to which are called land acres. So,

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Speaker 1: just to give a further example of my Indiana corn situation,

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Speaker 1: not the corn that's growing on your Indiana farm, but

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Speaker 1: the corn that metho Americans would have domesticated thousands of

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Speaker 1: years ago, as well as that domesticated corns wild ancestors.

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Speaker 1: So really every potential avenue for genetic success you could imagine. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that sounds like a pretty daunting task or goal,

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Speaker 1: but he so he started seriously collecting. In nineteen sixteen

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Speaker 1: on a trip to Iran Russian soldier station. There, we're

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Speaker 1: getting sick from some mysterious ailment, and Fabolov determined that

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Speaker 1: the wheat fields their bread was made from also contained

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Speaker 1: poisonous weeds and plants with fungal infection, so he solved

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Speaker 1: that problem there. But he also came home with seeds

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Speaker 1: from native cereals and that was the beginning of his

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Speaker 1: seed bank. Later mission sent him all over the place

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Speaker 1: to the United States, Central and South America, the Mediterranean, Ethiopia, China,

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Speaker 1: anywhere pretty much that he could collect large stores of seeds,

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Speaker 1: and he ultimately collected sixty thousand samples himself in sixty

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Speaker 1: four different countries. His teams collected two hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: thousand samples thirty one thousand wheat specimens alone, and a

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Speaker 1: visit to Afghanistan even won him the gold medal of

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Speaker 1: the Russian Geographic Society, of which he became president later.

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Speaker 1: So thus the Indiana Jones comparison definitely. So. Of course,

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Speaker 1: during all these travels though he wasn't just blindly collecting,

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Speaker 1: he was observing what he saw, and in nineteen nine

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Speaker 1: he published The Geographic Origins of Cultivated Plants, which identified

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Speaker 1: seven or eight major centers of origin, depending on what

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Speaker 1: source you look at, for the world's cultivated crops. So,

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Speaker 1: just to give you an example, and there was a

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Speaker 1: good pictorial in the national and geographic if you wanted

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Speaker 1: further illustration of this, but um South Asia, you have rice, cucumber, mango,

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Speaker 1: and orange kind of spring from from that area, or

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Speaker 1: show a lot of diversity in that area, wheat, barley

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Speaker 1: and flax from East Africa. And there are these regions

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Speaker 1: and in all different areas of the world. And today

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Speaker 1: scientists consider these centers of diversity rather than centers of origin.

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Speaker 1: But it was still a really important observation, genetic observation,

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Speaker 1: geographic genetic observation really at the time. But even as

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Speaker 1: Babolov's reputation grew and his you know, he's producing these

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Speaker 1: important works and collecting important specimens, and his government positions

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Speaker 1: were becoming more and more prestigious, his programs were starting

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Speaker 1: to lose funding, and by the nineteen thirties his position

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Speaker 1: had become pretty unstable under Stalin. And there were a

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Speaker 1: few reasons for this. One. For one thing, Babalov had

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Speaker 1: come from a wealthy family and was well educated. And

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Speaker 1: it was also the idea of Mendelian genetics that he

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Speaker 1: believed in some you know, the idea that some traits

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Speaker 1: are desirable and all is not equal. This didn't gel

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Speaker 1: with Stalin's belief in equality at all, it's completely counter

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Speaker 1: to it. And there was also the pseudo scientist Trophium Losenko.

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Speaker 1: Lessenko was everything Favolov was not. He was a peasant,

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Speaker 1: poorly educated, and extremely political, and as his star rose,

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Speaker 1: Favolov's fell. Lessenko rejected the genetics of mental in favor

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Speaker 1: of maturism, which was basically a type of Lamarckian genetics.

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Speaker 1: And in this type of genetics, he believed that acquired

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Speaker 1: characteristics could be inherited. So just an example for you there,

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Speaker 1: and I remember this from biology to the giraffe's neck

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Speaker 1: stretching out, So basically, instead of instead of it being

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Speaker 1: a series of inherited traits and um, the draft with

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Speaker 1: the mutation that gives it the slightly large, slightly longer

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Speaker 1: neck is more likely to survive. Instead of that being

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Speaker 1: the case, it's the apparent giraffe slightly stretches its neck

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Speaker 1: over its lifetime and therefore has a baby giraffe with

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Speaker 1: a slightly longer neck. But it's really weird to think

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Speaker 1: about it like that when you apply it to like

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Speaker 1: what if you broke your arm, would your kid have

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Speaker 1: a slightly irregular arm because of that no, So Lessenko

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Speaker 1: took that concept and applied it to plants. He thought

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Speaker 1: they could acquire characteristics from their environment. So, for example,

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Speaker 1: wheat plants raised in the right environment could potentially produce

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Speaker 1: wry seeds, which sounds kind of hard to believe exactly.

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Speaker 1: But Lessenko was also a major proponent of something called vernalization,

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Speaker 1: which was an old idea but eventually it came to

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Speaker 1: be really closely associated with him. And it was just

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Speaker 1: the the idea of exposing seeds to cold temperatures to

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Speaker 1: shorten their growing cycle. But it was unpredictable and um

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Speaker 1: it had some pretty serious consequences, as we'll see. But

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Speaker 1: Stalin liked Lessenko and he liked this variety of genetics

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Speaker 1: because of a few reasons. Really. Lessenko gave big promises

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Speaker 1: for what he could do for Russia, and Russia had

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Speaker 1: of course been in a food crisis since the evolution,

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Speaker 1: and Lessenko promised high yield wheat crops in just three years, which, hey,

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Speaker 1: that sounds pretty awesome because by contrast, Babolov knew it

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Speaker 1: would take twelve years to breed carefully breed better wheat varieties. Um.

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Speaker 1: But also Lessenko had the right kind of ideology, like

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Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier. Um, how Vavilov's ideology didn't really fit

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Speaker 1: with Stalin. Lessenko thought that plants could be educated, like

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Speaker 1: literally educated, just like Russian peasants could be educated to

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Speaker 1: replace the elite. Everyone was equal, everything's possible. Um. It

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Speaker 1: was a way to make science kind of political. So,

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Speaker 1: according to a New Yorker article by John Seabrook, Vavalov

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Speaker 1: didn't really realize how serious this threat, though, was. He

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Speaker 1: thought that the dispute with Lessenko was just a scholarly one,

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Speaker 1: and it really encouraged debate with him too. You know,

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Speaker 1: thought that Russia needed to be looking into every viable

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Speaker 1: option for for preventing famine and for dealing with this crisis,

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Speaker 1: and was willing to to at least look into and

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Speaker 1: acknowledge these kind of out their theories. Yeah, Blesenko was

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Speaker 1: not in the same boat, though. He rose in power

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Speaker 1: and he became director of the Institute of Genetics of

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Speaker 1: the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and he's been

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Speaker 1: called Russia's genetic dictator. Since dissenting scientists were removed, arrested,

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Speaker 1: or just disappeared. Even the dictator of biology. He had

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Speaker 1: a pretty big effect on sciences across the board. So

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Speaker 1: in August nineteen forty Vabolov was arrested with two of

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Speaker 1: his colleagues and charged with treason an espionage. He was

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Speaker 1: interrogated and tortured for eleven months before being found guilty

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Speaker 1: by a tribunal in just five minutes, and he was

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Speaker 1: sentenced to death by firing squad. So his colleagues were shot,

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Speaker 1: but Vavolov personally appealed to the head of the secret

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Speaker 1: police and had his sentence commuted to twenty years in

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Speaker 1: a prison camp on the Volga River. On January twenty,

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, he died there of starvation, I mean

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Speaker 1: of all of all things. But during his trial and imprisonment,

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Speaker 1: Vavlov's colleagues kept up his work. They didn't just abandon

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Speaker 1: it at all because he had been arrested. They gathered

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Speaker 1: up his research, they saved his documents, and most importantly,

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Speaker 1: the scientists who were stationed at that main lining grad

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Speaker 1: seed bank defended it from Hitler's army during the city's

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Speaker 1: siege and during the winter of nineteen forty one to

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Speaker 1: forty two, the scientists who were guarding the collection, which

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Speaker 1: obviously mean tons of seeds which are edible and nutritious.

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Speaker 1: We're not just defending it from potential German invaders. They

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Speaker 1: were defending it from the starving Russians outside too, and

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Speaker 1: from rats, thousands and thousands of rats that would apparently

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Speaker 1: invade the collection the institute basements at night, and the

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Speaker 1: scientists would use metal rods to sort of fend them

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Speaker 1: off and protect the seeds and one of the crops too.

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Speaker 1: You know, you can you can keep a wheat seed

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Speaker 1: as long as you keep it away from the rats

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Speaker 1: for a few years. That something like potatoes need to

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Speaker 1: be reso to to stay alive, and so they would

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Speaker 1: re soap potatoes on the front lawn or in any

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Speaker 1: available land they could find. And two of these scientists

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Speaker 1: died inside the building, inside the building with all of

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Speaker 1: those seeds to eat the first winter. One was a

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Speaker 1: specialist on rife, one was a specialist on peanuts, and

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Speaker 1: by the end of the siege in the spring of

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Speaker 1: n nine, scientists had starved to death rather than eat

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Speaker 1: their stores of seeds. That's some major commitment. But while

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Speaker 1: the scientists clearly took the collection seriously and we're willing

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Speaker 1: to sacrifice their lives for what they saw as their

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Speaker 1: country's way out of famine. The Soviets didn't really see

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Speaker 1: it that way. Before the siege, they had ordered that

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Speaker 1: the cities aren't be evacuated, but they did nothing to

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Speaker 1: protect the seed Bank hill Or. On the other hand,

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Speaker 1: he clearly saw the appeal of possessing a copy of

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Speaker 1: the world genetic resources. So while the main collection in

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Speaker 1: Leningrad was saved and eventually smuggled out over the Ural Mountains,

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Speaker 1: some of the many outer stations did fall into German control,

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Speaker 1: about two hundred of them actually by three and according

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Speaker 1: to a New Scientist article by Fred Pierce, before the

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Speaker 1: invasion even happened, scientists from the Kaiser Wilhelm institutes made

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Speaker 1: plans to seize the research institutes. The really disturbing thing here, though,

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Speaker 1: is that it wasn't just about science. I mean, you

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Speaker 1: can you can see the appeal of possessing these huge

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Speaker 1: supplies of seeds, having all this genetic material at your disposal,

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Speaker 1: But one of the groups most interested in the seed

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Speaker 1: seizing was the A A Naarbe, which it was the

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Speaker 1: ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society set up by none

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Speaker 1: other than Heinrich Kimmler to prove that the Arians were

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Speaker 1: the superior race. So there was there was kind of

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Speaker 1: a superiority manipulation thing going on here to to to

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Speaker 1: possess all of these all of this genetic material all

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Speaker 1: and and be able to select the best from it.

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Speaker 1: So one of these botanists that were sent out to

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Speaker 1: follow German troops into the Soviet Union and take over

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Speaker 1: these stations, um that essentially they've been called Hiller's bio pirates,

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Speaker 1: was a guy named Hinz Bruser. Brusher was put in

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Speaker 1: charge of a commando unit to raid certain institutes and

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Speaker 1: brought back huge stores of seeds to the eventual FS

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Speaker 1: Institute of Plant Genetics at Lenok, which was an old

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Speaker 1: remote castle in Austria, where those stores, the stores from

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Speaker 1: Russia were mixed up with earlier German collections that had

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Speaker 1: been taken from Tibet, so to to really strange different

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Speaker 1: correct collections they're mixed in. But to add to the

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Speaker 1: strangeness and the surprisingness of this whole situation, the Institute

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Speaker 1: of Plant Genetics was staffed by prisoners of war and

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Speaker 1: a group of women. Jehovah's witnesses that were from a

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Speaker 1: nearby concentration camp, and they just worked on maintaining the seeds,

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Speaker 1: planning out ones that needed to be planted, and and

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Speaker 1: carrying out experiments too, because one of the British POWs

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Speaker 1: was actually a trained botanist who worked pretty closely with

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Speaker 1: Lucky Break I mean, I guess though worked closely with

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Speaker 1: with Brusher to carry out the genetic experiments. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: the fate of this particular collection is also kind of

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Speaker 1: a mystery. Brusher ignored orders to blow the place up

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Speaker 1: as the Red Army approached. Some of the seeds could

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Speaker 1: have been eventually returned to Russia. That's one theory. Or

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Speaker 1: Brusher or one of his British POWs may have taken

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Speaker 1: possession of some of these seeds. So if it was

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Speaker 1: the British prisoner botanist guy right, the botanist um. He

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Speaker 1: actually went on to create a seed company, which is

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Speaker 1: kind of interesting. Yes, that's a maybe a strange coincidence,

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Speaker 1: maybe not. And Brusher spent some time in Sweden after

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Speaker 1: the war before heading to a life in exile in

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Speaker 1: Argentina where he started a gene bank. Also kind of interesting, yes,

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Speaker 1: And in n he was shot in his Argentina vineyard.

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Speaker 1: So a life kind of shrouded in mystery and controversy.

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Speaker 1: And I don't know if we'll ever know the exact

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Speaker 1: answer to that one for sure. So that's one group

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Speaker 1: of seeds. Though out of the many, many collections that

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Speaker 1: were in Russia, that main institute in Leningrad which is

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Speaker 1: now St. Petersburg, never fell. The scientists defended it, and

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Speaker 1: uh it continues on today as the Evoval of Research

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Speaker 1: Institute of Plant Industry. All these places have very long names,

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Speaker 1: I know. UM. But just late last year, one of

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Speaker 1: the institute's main stations where they would plant out things

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Speaker 1: that couldn't just be stored as frozen seeds. UM, which

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Speaker 1: is that the Czar's Palace of puff Loss was under

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Speaker 1: threat of development. International outcry came up because um it

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Speaker 1: had a lot of really rare specimens, perhaps some specimens

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Speaker 1: that are contained nowhere else in the world, grown nowhere

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Speaker 1: else in the world. Um. It's it's basically a garden,

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Speaker 1: so it would be really really hard to relocate. It's

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Speaker 1: it's a lot easier to move a vial of seeds

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Speaker 1: than to dig up an apple tree. And the diversity

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Speaker 1: there is pretty amazing. I mean, just to give you

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Speaker 1: a few examples, they have one thousand varieties of strawberries,

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Speaker 1: which I'm a strawberry fan, so that sounds like pretty nice,

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Speaker 1: and six hundred types of apples and and lots of

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Speaker 1: other fruits. It's mostly a fruit based station. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: it looks like you wouldn't be the only one who

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Speaker 1: would be sad if if this were destroyed. Carrie Fowler,

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Speaker 1: who runs the Global Crop Diversity Trust, the organization that

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Speaker 1: funds this fall barred Global Seed Vault in Norway, said

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Speaker 1: that the loss of the collection would be quote the

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Speaker 1: largest intentional preventible loss of crop diversity in my lifetime.

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Speaker 1: So pretty significant, pretty serious. And um let me know

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Speaker 1: if you if you maybe if you live in Russia,

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Speaker 1: or if you've just followed this story closely. I'm wondering

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Speaker 1: if it's still tied up in court, because I haven't

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Speaker 1: been able to find anything either saying that it has

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Speaker 1: been bulldozed in upscale houses have been built, or that

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Speaker 1: it's preserved in the strawberries are safe for now, but

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Speaker 1: let me know. You can email us that history podcast

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Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. And um, also, I

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Speaker 1: noticed a book that came out recently, and I was

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Speaker 1: thinking some of my geneticist friends might be interested in

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Speaker 1: this for a Christmas present. But if you guys are

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Speaker 1: interested in learning more about the story, it seems like

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Speaker 1: it would probably be a good source. It's called The

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Speaker 1: Murder of Nikolai Vavolov by Peter Pringle. I think it

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Speaker 1: came out in about two thousand seven or two thousand eight,

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Speaker 1: and I read some reviews for it during this during

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Speaker 1: this podcast. But if you once again have any updates

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Speaker 1: on the seed facility or the plant facility in Russia,

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Speaker 1: or if you just have more scientists suggestions, this was

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Speaker 1: pretty pretty fun story to research. I mean, I know

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Speaker 1: it's it's quite tragic, but um I enjoyed it quite

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Speaker 1: a bit. Send it our way once again. History podcast

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Speaker 1: at how staff works dot com. We're also on Twitter

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Speaker 1: at mist in history, and we're on Facebook. And if

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Speaker 1: you don't have time to read a whole book, but

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Speaker 1: you still want to learn a little bit more about

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Speaker 1: seed vaults, we have an article on our website called

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Speaker 1: house seed Vaults Work, and you can look at it

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00:21:16,520 --> 00:21:19,760
Speaker 1: by visiting our homepage at www dot how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,

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00:21:26,240 --> 00:21:29,080
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future. Join how stof Work staff as

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00:21:29,119 --> 00:21:32,800
Speaker 1: we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.

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00:21:33,760 --> 00:21:36,360
Speaker 1: The How Stuff Works iPhone app has a rise. Download

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00:21:36,400 --> 00:21:37,800
Speaker 1: it today on iTunes