What is Nikolai Vavilov?
[[File:Nikolai Vavilov NYWTS.jpg|thumb|right|220px|Nikolai Vavilov]] '''Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov''' <ref>{{lang-ru|Николай Иванович Вавилов}}</ref> (25 November 1887 – 26 January 1943) was a [[Russia]]n [[botanist]] and [[genetics|geneticist]]. He is best known for showing how and where [[crop]] plants [[Evolution|evolved]]. He devoted his life to [[agriculture]]: the study and improvement of [[wheat]], [[Maize|corn]], and other [[cereal]] crops. By 1940, Vavilov had accumulated a collection of 200,000 [[plant]] [[seeds]] from the [[Soviet Union]] and from abroad. He was widely admired, but his life came to a terrible end. Vavilov repeatedly criticised a powerful but poor scientist, [[Trofim Lysenko]]. As a result, Vavilov was arrested, and died of starvation in a prison in 1943.<ref>Pringle, Peter 2008. ''The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: the story of [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]'s persecution of one of the great scientists of the twentieth century''.</ref> Today Vavilov's name stands high. The ''Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry'' in [[Saint Petersburg|St. Petersburg]] is named after him. It maintains one of the world's largest collections of plant genetic material. == Vavilovian mimicry == This is [[mimicry]] in plants where a [[weed]] comes to look like a [[crop]] plant. Before [[herbicide]]s, weeds were plucked by hand. This has been done for thousands of years. The weeds come to look like the crop because the weeders pick those weeds which look most different. Vavilovian mimicry is caused by unintentional selection by humans. The weeds that survive pass on their [[genes]]. Gradually, all the weeds look more like the crop plant. [[File:Secale cereale.jpg|right|thumb|[[Rye]] is a now a crop. Originally it was a mimetic weed of [[wheat]]]] An example is [[rye]], a common Mediterranean species. Rye was originally just a weed growing with [[wheat]] and [[barley]]. Weeding made it like the crop. Like wheat, it came to have larger seeds and more rigid spindles to which the seeds are attached. Rye is a tougher pl