Centenary of Nikolai Vavilov's foundational crop paper

Russian agricultural scientist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov published his landmark paper, 'Studies on the origin of cultivated plants', in 1926, which remains foundational to crop science today.

Vavilov identified eight global 'centres of origin' where most cultivated crops and their wild relatives originated.

He built the world's first global seed bank in 1921 in Leningrad, collecting approximately 2.5 lakh crop varieties and species for agricultural research.