Research and Organizing Activities of Virologist and Mycologist Semen Mykytovych Moskovets (devoted to the 120th anniversary of the birth)

Abstract

The article is devoted to S.M. Moskovets, an outstanding Ukrainian agrobiologist and phytovirologist, whose research in mycological and virus diseases made a remarkable contribution in the plant disease control. The source base for the study consists of individual research works by Moscovets, his colleagues and disciples, information and records from editions about the history of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and recollections of his fellow workers. Because the research legacy of Moskovets was not adequately exposed in reference books and monographs on the history of botany, biology and medicine, the article’s objective is to reproduce the activities of this scientist in various regions of the former USSR (Azerbaijan, and the South of Ukraine) and in the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, with outlining his contributions in solving the problems of the national significance. It is demonstrated that the research activities of Moskovets covered four periods. In the first period (1930—1934) Moskovets was an associate professor of botanics in Kyiv Zoo-technical Institute and Kyiv Higher Communist Agricultural School, where he explored funguses affecting the wood. During the second period (1934—1952) he worked in Azerbaijan. As this period of his work still remains the least studied one, a detailed reconstruction of the history of his research work in this republic would require a scrutiny of archive records. In Transcaucasian Research Institute of Cotton-Growing Moskovets developed effective measures aimed to control cotton disease control and increase cotton yields. Research in virus disease of cotton that he performed laid the foundations for phytopathology and helped prevent diseases in other economically significant plants, such as sugar beets, maize, tomatoes, potatoes, tobaccos, wheat, beans, soya, lupin, and broad beans. In the third period (1952—1960) Moskovets worked in the Ukrainian Research Institute of Irrigated Farming in the city of Kherson, where he, as the head of the plant protection department of plant protection and deputy director, could continue his research in phytopathology. The fourth period of his work (1960—1971) was the most fruitful one and related with Kyiv and the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. To expand research in plant disease at the enhanced scientific level, in 1960 Moskovets was invited to Danylo Zabolotny Institute of Microbiology, where he created the virology department (renamed in 1963 as the plant virus department), and in 1962 he became the director of Danylo Zabolotny Institute of Microbiology. The article shows this scientist’s contribution in transforming Danylo Zabolotny Institute for Microbiology and Virology into an outstanding broad-skilled research institution and launching virology research in research institutions of Ukraine and other soviet republics. The organizing abilities and pedagogical talents of the scientist are highlighted.