Apples and Pears in Orchards of Michurin Experimenters

Moscow, 1951.

COLOR ATLAS OF APPLES BASED ON TECHNIQUES DEVELOPED BY IVAN MICHURIN BEFORE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.

10 1/4 inches tall volume with original navy flexible cloth covered boards, cover with blindstamped image of apple, and gilt title; gilt title to spine, decorative endpapers with sepia orchard scene. 130 black & white figures throughout text, and 32 colored plates of apples and pears. Corners and spine ends rubbed, very good.

IVAN VLADIMIROVICH MICHURIN (1855 – 1935) was a Russian practitioner of selection to produce new types of crop plants, Honorable Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and academician of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agriculture. Michurin was one of the founding fathers of scientific agricultural selection. He worked on hybridization of plants of similar and different origins, cultivating methods in connection with the natural course of ontogenesis, directing the process of predominance, evaluation and selection of seedlings, and acceleration of the process of selection with the help of physical and chemical factors. One of the most highly cited phrases by Michurin was: "We cannot wait for favors from Nature. To take them from it – that is our task." During the Lysenkoism campaign, work by Michurin was misused, after his death, by the Soviet propaganda as an argument against genetics.