“In two years, we have completely changed the entire varietal composition”
We are driving through the steppe Crimea, Krasnogvardeisky district. On the way, every now and then come across dried-up beds of irrigation canals, once waterways extending from the North Crimean canal. In 2014, the Ukrainian side erected a dam, and Crimea lost its Dnieper water.
“We had 2,400 hectares of irrigated land, sprinklers are still standing in the fields, there is not enough strength and spirit to cut what fed you into metal,” says Vladimir Pashtetsky, director of the Crimean Research Institute of Agriculture, chopping the air with his hands. – Of course, it was not easy. We immediately lost 100 thousand hectares of rice crop rotation, 58-60 hectares of corn. And also all varieties of wheat, barley, because they were Ukrainian. We had no rights to them. What was it to sow? The southern regions, scientific institutes of Krasnodar, Stavropol, Rostov-on-Don came to the rescue. “KamaAZs” with grain went to Crimea in a stream. We have completely changed the entire varietal composition in two years.
Vladimir Stepanovich meets us in the village of Klepinino, where the department of introduction and technologies in field cultivation and animal husbandry of the Research Institute of Agriculture of Crimea is located. In 1924, Professor Nikolai Klepinin founded the first experimental station here, noting that if they here, in the northern steppe of Crimea, in the most perilous, arid place, feed themselves, then they will feed the entire population of the peninsula.
The same healthy optimism is shared by Vladimir Pashtetsky, doctor of agricultural science, who has been running the institute for 16 years. Under his leadership, a team of 400 people, 7 thousand hectares of land. It leads us through the fields like a steamer, powerfully cutting through the wheat with its hull. When we arrive at the “point”, the site where the plants were planted on the experimental field using a special noutil technology, without cultivating the land, using the direct sowing method, Vladimir Stepanovich admonishes his subordinates: “Speak to the point, no introductory words, this is not a party meeting for you.”
We find out that the seeder with a disc goes straight through the virgin soil, and seeds are sown in the cut right on the plant residues of previous crops. The head of the agriculture laboratory of the Crimean Agricultural Research Institute Yevgeny Turin explains that with this method of sowing, the soil is not disturbed, natural fertility is preserved, as well as beneficial microbes.
According to the specialist, over the past 30 years, the air temperature in Crimea has increased by 2 degrees. Precipitation remained the same, but evaporation increased. Crimea, in fact, is turning into a desert. Therefore, it was important to learn how to work the soil so that it retains moisture as much as possible. Then they began to apply the direct seeding method, which is already in use in South America. The yield was exactly the same as in the plots where the soil was cultivated. At the same time, the economic efficiency has become higher. The manufacturer now has the opportunity to save gasoline and use the remaining funds for development.
When the water in the North Crimean Canal dried up, scientists had to turn to domestic drought-resistant crops and varieties. As the deputy director for scientific work of the Research Institute of Agriculture of Crimea Lyudmila Radchenko told us, together with the Don Agrarian Scientific Center, they created new drought-resistant varieties of winter wheat, winter and spring barley, adapted for waterless Crimea. Such fields simply do not need to be watered.
“At the same time, the average grain yield in recent years has increased from 2.3 tons per hectare to 2.6. This is how the state-science-production link works, ”says Vladimir Pashtetsky.
With the loss of water, soybeans, one of the most important components of animal feed, have ceased to be planted in Crimea. Rice and corn were also lost to the peninsula. They were replaced by new cultures. We are shown fields with dyeing safflower and winter camelina. These plants are able to withstand both high temperatures and prolonged drought, for which they were called “oil camels”.
“Winter mushroom is a new crop for Crimea, we have been studying it since 2015,” says Elena Turina, a leading researcher at the agriculture laboratory of the Crimean Research Institute of Agriculture. – Now it is planted in rice paddies.
In the conditions of the Crimea, the camelina showed amazing properties. Camelina oil obtained on the peninsula has the most optimal ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids and is an excellent alternative to fish oil. The staff of the institute say that it was camelina oil that saved them during the pandemic. It also goes to biodegradable films, adhesives, drying oils and paints. It is used in soap making; it is a resource for the production of biodiesel and bioaviakero. And the cake is sent to feed farm animals.
As we found out, right on the field in five minutes, you can determine the total content of nutrients in the soil and in the plants themselves. For these purposes, a mobile express laboratory is used. When we take a plant sample, place it in a mini-press, make a squeeze, use a pipette to apply cell juice to the membrane of the analyzers and read the content of various elements on the board, determine the state of the nutrient background.
“This is necessary in order to understand which sowing variety suits us best, where we will get better quality grain,” says Alla Zubochenko, a senior researcher at the Crimean Research Institute of Agriculture. – We take samples, establish a direct dialogue with the plants. Understanding what elements are missing, we begin to heal the plant, adjust the nutrition.
“The future belongs to microbiologists”
We made sure that all departments of the Research Institute of Agriculture of the Crimea work in close connection with each other. In the livestock department of the Crimean Agricultural Research Institute, we were told about the creation of a new Crimean meat hybrid, calling this direction a strategic task in the field of import substitution. The fact is that in industrial rabbit breeding, hybrids of French and Hungarian selection are most often used. In the event of possible sanctions, this could negatively affect the industry. Therefore, it was important to develop a domestic hybrid.
The rabbits here fatten on a special feed mixture, which does not contain hay, but has all the necessary components. Waste of essential oil production is also used. Scientists managed to replace the antibiotic with a phytobiotic, which was created using oregano, thyme, wild bergamot and other crops. And rabbit manure, in turn, with the help of special bacteria is processed into fertilizer, which enriches the soil. Such is the loop-back waste-free production.
Vladimir Pashtetsky says that the future belongs to microbiologists and organic products. We visited the department of agricultural microbiology of the Crimean Agricultural Research Institute in the village of Gvardeyskoye and saw how large-scale problems scientists are solving there. For example, weeds are fought there with the help of pathogenic microorganisms, phytophagous insects and mycoherbicides – fungal-based herbicides that produce toxic compounds and dissolve the cell walls of weed plants.
The institute’s collection contains more than 200 strains. Scientists managed to obtain strains that help fight leaf-eating pests. Using a biological method, with the help of microbial preparations, they learned here to suppress such a quarantine weed and a strong allergen as ragweed. This is the scourge of Crimea. According to scientists, the Crimean ambrosia fields are already about 340 thousand hectares. Vladimir Pashtetsky says if there was grant support, the specialists of the institute could solve this problem throughout the peninsula in a couple of years.
A lot of straw is left in the fields after harvesting wheat and rice. Then they set it on fire, the fields are clouded with smoke, often the blasts provoke fires. The scientists of the institute have received a complex of microbial preparations that “eat up” and decompose plant residues. It is enough just to apply the preparation on straw or stubble and immediately embed it into the soil.
Pashtetsky says he would hire experienced microbiologists right now. The average salary in Crimea is 28 thousand rubles, at the institute, research workers receive about 60 thousand. There are specialists who are ready to move from Ukraine, because science in Crimea is developing and financed better, there are more developments here.
Natural antibiotics
Pashtetsky considers essential oil to be the most unique and competitive industry.
– Think about it, China exports a huge amount of medicinal raw materials from Altai and the Far East, increasing purchases by 3 billion every year. In Japan, 92% of the population daily use plant materials in various forms for the prevention of diseases, and in our country – 1–2% of the population. Our institute has more than 1100 names of essential oil plants. They have everything that the human body needs. These are natural antibiotics that can keep the body in good shape.
Vladimir Pashtetsky says that from a hectare of wheat you can get 20 thousand rubles in profit, from a hectare of grapes – 58-100 thousand, and on a hectare of the same lavender in three years you can earn 450 thousand, with a good harvest – and half a million rubles. A liter of refined oil costs 100 euros in Europe.
But everywhere we didn’t see blooming fields with lavender, rose, sage, coriander in the steppe Crimea. The point is that all of these plants are not considered crops.
– Growing grapes, raspberries, apples or pears, you can count on government support in the form of compensations and subsidies, and if you start growing a rose, hyssop or echinacea, you will get nothing. They are not considered agricultural crops. The Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation says: “We think …” Such is the short-sightedness and misunderstanding.
This also applies to the rose. We visited the breeding and seed center for essential oil crops of the institute in the village of Krymskaya Roza, Belogorsk region. We saw how an essential oil rose was harvested. The girls deftly cracked the flower heads and sent them to special cloth baskets tied to the lower back. We found out that you can get about 5 kilograms of rose essential oil per hectare per season.
Right there, on the side of the road, stood a mobile complex for the processing of essential oil and medicinal raw materials. The collected roses were loaded into a distiller, where steam was fed from below. Essential oil was released from the rose petals and, together with the steam, entered the heat exchanger. On cooling, the fractions were separated, rose water flowed into one flask, and in another container we observed a small film of rose oil.
– I saw this complex in China, in the lavender capital, it is very convenient. For example, a man sowed 5 hectares of lavender at home, harvested 20 tons, these are two machines. Where to take her? Don’t take it anywhere! The installation itself will come to you, it will be enough to turn on the generator – and processing will go.
To get a kilogram of rose oil, you need 5-6 tons of rose. But this unique raw material costs about 10 thousand dollars per kilogram.
Vladimir Pashtetskiy is called the “perpetual motion machine”, “the ideological inspirer” and “the locomotive of the agricultural science of the Crimea.” He does not like politics. She says she doesn’t like anything dirty at all. If you put on a jacket, then it must be clean. If there is a relationship, then they must be decent. And where there is politics, there is some kind of game, behind-the-scenes games.
Since 2014, when Crimea became Russian, in human terms, as Vladimir Stepanovich assures, nothing has changed.
– I have neighbors on one side of the house – Crimean Tatars, on the other – Russians. As we got together on weekends in the evenings to play chess, we are going. Maybe only the conversations became more noisy and emotional. We also continue to communicate and correspond with colleagues from Ukraine, science has no boundaries.
On May 14, Vladimir Pashtetsky turned 60. When I ask what he is dreaming of, Vladimir Stepanovich, without hesitation, says: “So that Crimea receives Dnieper water, so that there is no war, so that the essential oil industry is recognized.” And he admits that his life is not easy, but interesting, and, starting all over again, he would not change anything in it.
.