Vavilov: The Correct Planting of Cabbage Seedlings is a live, growing installation that starts with one of the world’s oldest seed banks and journeys through the fascinating story of the Soviet botanist and geneticist Nikolai Vavilov to Greater Manchester allotments, a local college, and into an open-source robotics community. Vavilov was a scientist who pioneered modern genetics, working with the leading figures of his time to cultivate crops that would grow in any environment and end world hunger. The ultimate irony would be his death in a gulag from starvation.
During the 872 day Leningrad Siege in WW2, the city’s population was cut off from food supplies. The Vavilov institute distributed seeds from its collection to the community saving thousands of people from starvation.
At the centre of the installation is a Farmbot that cultivates the same cabbage seeds distributed by the Vavilov Institute during the siege. The robot is trained from the instructional pamphlets that were distributed by the institute to Leningrad’s trapped population.
The end of the three month exhibit, the plants were harvested (from both the allotments and farmbot) and transformed into a communal meal for 60 held in the gallery. During the meal, which coincided with Russian christmas, a series of talks where held with the project collaborators.