Cultivation as Taking Care of Plant Diversity and Global Commons: Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov’s Legacy

Abstract

Biodiversity and agrobiodiversity are global commons and hu- mans should well understand the necessity of managing natural and farm induced plant variability at world level. In the 1930s, Russian geneticist, botanist and geographer Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov carried out worldwide researches on plant variety, col- lecting and storing germplams of all world major crops. His vi- sion on world centers of origin of cultivated plants is outdated, but his scientific ideas on plant geographical diversity preceded the ongoing concerns for loss of plant variability. In fact, even today FAO considers areas originally individuated by Vavilov as global priority genetic reserve locations for wild relatives of 12 main food crops. Both storing and farming will assure so- cieties productive and conservative services, and studying the geographical diversity of plants is a strong necessity for assur- ing sustainability on a global scale