Symyrenko, Volodymyr

Symyrenko, Volodymyr, b 31 December 1891 in Mliiv, Cherkasy county, Kyiv gubernia, d (shot) on the night of 17–18 September 1938. Pomologist and selection scientist of the Symyrenko family; son of Lev Symyrenko. A graduate of the agricultural faculty of the Kyiv Polytechnical Institute (1915), he founded and directed the Mliiv Orcharding Research Station (1921–30) and chaired the orcharding section of the Agricultural Scientific Committee of Ukraine. He was a key figure in the interwar reconstruction of orchards in Ukraine; in 1928 his nurseries contained 40,000 hybrids of fruit trees and berry bushes. He worked for the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Orcharding (1930–3) and taught at the Uman Agricultural Institute (1932–3). His views on orchard development and heredity were in conflict with Soviet views and with those of the geneticist I. Michurin. Early in 1933 Symyrenko was arrested and given a 10-year term in prison near Kherson. He was released in 1937 but rearrested in 1938. Symyrenko prepared many scholarly and popular works in his field, including Sadovyi rozsadnyk (The Orchard Nursery, 1929) and Plodovi sortymenty Ukraïny (Fruit Varieties of Ukraine, 1930). A biography, by Ivan Rozhin, was published in Winnipeg (1960).