Crane • Lysenko's Experiments 



duces fruits abundantly but they are 

 entirely seedless. I have made eross- 

 pollinations between apple and pear, 

 but without success. 



I wonder why in this article we are, 

 as is usual in Soviet writings, left so 

 much in the dark and not told the 

 things we are eager to know. You will 

 note Professor Yakovlev says his hybrids 

 are fruit-bearing. An account of the 

 parent varieties and details of the 

 flowers and fruits of his apple-pear 

 hybrids would, I am sure, be of intense 

 interest to horticulturists and biologists 

 not only in this country' but throughout 

 the world. The same applies to his 

 plum-peach hybrid. Soviet biologists 

 should realize that if they would only 

 take the trouble to give us such details 

 we would then be able to appreciate 

 their work much better, and many 

 misunderstandings might be swept 

 away. 



On page 28 of his Soviet Biology 

 Lysenko says, "altered sections of the 

 body of the parent organism always 

 [sic] possess an altered heredity. Hor- 

 ticulturists have long known these 

 facts. An altered twig or bud of a fruit 

 tree or the eye (bud) of a potato tuber 

 cannot as a rule influence the heredity 

 of the offspring of the given tree or 

 tuber which are not directly generated 

 from the altered sections of the parent 

 organisms. If, however, the altered sec- 

 tion is cut away and grows separately 

 as an independent plant, the latter, as 

 a rule, will possess a changed heredity, 

 the one that characterized the altered 

 section of the parent plant." This, like 

 so much in the book is very far from 

 the truth, for we know beyond any dis- 

 putation that an alteration of the body 

 cells of an organism does not always 

 result in an altered heredity. 



Now one of the most brilliant and 

 informative investigations on this sub- 

 ject was carried out by Lysenko's coun- 

 try-woman T. Asseyava, and if he re- 

 fers to her publication, Asseyava 



257 



(1928), or better still discusses the 

 problem with her, he will find that 

 far from such alterations always having 

 a changed heredity, most often and, as 

 a rule, it remains the same. 



Asseyava investigated many such 

 body alterations, i.e. somatic mutant 

 alterations, in potatoes, and in all 

 cases she says "the characters of the 

 mutant are not transmitted through 

 seed, and its offspring are exactly simi- 

 lar to the progeny of the original va- 

 riet}'." The reason why there was no 

 changed heredity, although the altered 

 potatoes had for long been grown as 

 independent plants and were so distinct 

 that they had different varietal names, 

 is simple and clear. The alterations did 

 not penetrate as far as the germ-tract, 

 and hence could not change heredity. 

 With body alterations it does not mat- 

 ter whether or not they are removed 

 from the parent organism; if the altera- 

 tions go as deeply as the germ-tract 

 they will be inherited, otherwise they 

 will not. This of course applies to twigs 

 and buds of fruit trees, etc., as well as 

 to potatoes. With such a lamentable 

 lack of horticultural and biological 

 knowledge, it is perhaps not surprising 

 that Soviet Biology contains so many 

 loose statements and inaccurate con- 

 clusions. 



IV 



Lysenko brings in Michurinism in 

 connection with the inheritance of ac- 

 quired characters and he states, "the 

 well-known Lamarckian propositions, 

 which recognise the active role of ex- 

 ternal conditions in the formation of 

 the living body and the heredity of ac- 

 quired characters, unlike the meta- 

 physics of Neo-Darwinism (or Weis- 

 mannism) are by no means faulty. On 

 the contrary, they are quite true and 

 scientific." I cannot find anything in 

 the book which proves that the inheri- 

 tance of acquired characters is true. 



