Collecting mission to Sardinia (Italy)

5-15 June, 2012 on initiative of Prof. I. Camarda from the Sassari University (Sardinia, Italy) a collecting mission to Sardinia was conducted jointly with VIR.  In the collecting mission participated A. Brunu from the Italian part and Igor Loskutov from the Russian part. The expedition was carried out in commemoration of the 125^th anniversary from Nikolay Vavilov`s birth along the route of his collecting mission of 1926-1927.

In the preparation period, studying of archive materials and gathering information about the area it turned out that N.I. Vavilov didn`t visit Sardinia, instead of this collecting of plant genetic resources on the island was done by Vavilov`s request in July 1927 by his associate Moses Natanovich (1898-1976), who was a student of Riga University at that time.

While planning a collecting mission in 2012 the passport data of VIR accession was used to select areas explored in 1927. Exploration and accession collection revealed that the diversity of agricultural crops and territory occupied by them have significantly shortened, as agriculture on the island became lossmaking. As a result of joint efforts aimed at collection of genetic resources in the main agricultural areas of the island 33 accession of grain crops (wheat, barley, oat, rye) and their wild relatives were acquired. Accessions were forwarded for conservation to the biodiversity conservation center of the University as well as to VIR.